I got a call late last night informing me that my dear friend, Barbara Morrione, passed away on Sunday. Barbara was an incredible woman of strength and integrity and I shall miss her. However, I'm also glad she is finally free from the confines of a body that was a painful prison.
Barbara Jean got a piano for her 9th birthday. She was so thrilled. Her parents, simple Idaho farmers, were kind and good people. You can imagine their suffering when both Barbara and her little brother contracted polio that year. It was the late 1940s, and this was one of the last polio epidemics in the United States. The Sabin Oral vaccine which I got as a child, marked the end of that horrible disease, which claimed the lives of all of the 35 children in that little Idaho school who contracted polio - except two. Barbara Jean and her little 5 year old brother were the only ones to survive.
Barbara spent the next year in an iron lung, with little hope for a real life in the future. Doctors told her parents that there was little chance she would live past her 21st birthday. She was to prove everyone wrong.
Her 21st birthday was marked by tragedy, however. After countless surgeries, she finally had her legs amputated that year. I asked her what, on retrospect, was the worst about losing her legs. She replied, "Giving up all my shoes!"
Barbara was to forge on and do everything she dreamed of doing: she became a seamstress, then attended LDS Business College for a degree in accounting, she married, learned to drive a car with special controls and took an across-country trip. She once ran an entire accounting department of over 40 employees!
When her first husband passed away, Barbara was still young. She met Michael at a meeting of the Polio Survivors Association at Rancho in Downey, California. Michael, too, was a polio survivor. The two married and have lived a lifetime of loving devotion. Michael is an extraordinary, talented, individual, too. Together with Barbara's caregiver and good friend, Ramona Valdez, they forged a happy family.
When I met Barbara in 1999, she had already beaten the odds. She was running a company out of her home and performing accounting services for half a dozen companies. She was slowing down physically, but still possessed a razor sharp intelligence and a charming wit.
She died Thursday, February 4th, of complications from a car accident caused by the mechanical failure of her specialized van the week before. She was at the wheel when the van ran into a tree in the Kaiser parking lot. The doctors and nurses at Kaiser saw the accident and were able to give her immediate care. Although she seemed fine, her fragile health was jeopardized and she was kept under observation. Ramona told me that she passed during the night of the 3rd/ 4th, as she was unresponsive that morning. Official cause of death appears to have been an aneurism or bleeding in the brain.
I know Barbara was afraid of dying. I told her once that I thought she'd be anxious to be rid of her broken body and how great it would be to see her mom again. She told me she just wasn't ready to go. I know she wanted to stay with her beloved Michael. I know she is waiting for him now, with her mom by her side, free from pain and sorrow.
But Ramona says she thought Barbara knew she was going to pass from some things that she had said the day before. So, it appears she was at peace and passed quietly in the night.
Barbara told me once that she didn't think much about her situation and that it was "okay as long as I keep busy". She was truly a remarkable lady.
I am so happy to have known you, Barbara. See you soon.
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