Patricia Ann Gilmore

Patricia passed away at the age of 82. Preceded in death by her husband Ronald Gilmore, her parents Fred Dee and Grace Lee Guthrie, brother Robert Guthrie, and sister Sandra Kay Recio, grandson Johnathon Combs.
Survivors include her daughters and their spouses Debbie and Keith Voyles, Sherrie and James Bynum, daughter Julie Olson, sons Ronald and Richard Gilmore, numerous grand and great-grand children. Her sister Laura Collier, brothers Rubert and Edward Guthrie.
Her Strength Was Its Own Kind of Light (by Julie Olson)
She was forged,
not made -
a woman carved out of grit and grace,
the kind the world only gets a few of
in an entire lifetime.
Her strength wasn't loud.
It didn't roar or demand witnesses.
It lived in the way she kept going
when everything in her life told her to stop.
It lived in the way she protected the people she loved
like a shield made of flesh and stubborn, unbreakable will.
She loved with a fire that didn't burn out.
Not once.
Not even when life tried to swallow her whole.
Her love was fierce,
the kind that stood guard over you in silence,
the kind that held on
even when her hands were tired
and her heart was bruised.
And she never asked for applause.
She never asked to be thanked.
She simply gave-
again and again-
because she believed love was something you proved
with your life,
not your words.
There was wisdom in her,
the kind built from surviving what she never spoke about.
There was softness too,
but it was the softness of water:
able to wear mountains down over time,
able to shape entire worlds.
She faced every storm head-on,
chin lifted,
eyes steady-
not because she wasn't afraid,
but because she refused to let fear define her.
She stood her ground
in ways most people never learn how to.
And when her body weakened,
her spirit didn't.
When her memory flickered like a candle in the wind,
her soul still burned bright.
Even in the end,
even in her quietest moments,
there was strength in her-
a strength that didn't let her leave this world
until she had given it everything she had.
Now the world is missing a force it didn't even know
was holding it together.
And you are left carrying the pieces of her love
that she handed to you slowly,
year after year,
until they became part of your bones.
Nothing about her was small.
Nothing about her was forgettable.
She leaves a legacy written
not in letters or plaques or polished words-
but in the people she saved,
the hearts she held,
the battles she fought,
the love she poured into every inch of her life.
She was strength.
She was loyalty.
She was love in its fiercest form.
And now she rests-
not gone,
not lost-
just finally untouchable by pain,
finally free.
I'm proud to say, "SHE IS MY MOM "