Always ‘a fighter,’ she battled back from heart surgery. Then she died from coronavirus.
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Remembering those lost to COVID-19
The story of a life can’t be told with numbers. As more people die from complications of COVID-19, The News & Observer wants to tell their stories. Those lost were friends and neighbors, grandmothers and uncles, people now missing from communities and families. If you’ve lost a loved one or friend in North Carolina to the coronavirus, please tell us more about them. Email jdjackson@newsobserver.com or call 919-829-4707 and leave a message. Here are their stories.
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Barbara Gaines had a great-grandchild on the way as she was preparing for open-heart surgery in January. At 71, the Lee County native had had four kinds of cancer, a stroke and a heart attack.
Before going under the knife she told her expecting granddaughter that if something happened, if she didn’t make it this time, not to worry, that it meant her baby would be strong.
Barbara Gaines did make it. Her bypass surgery took 12 hours instead of four, she spent a month in a coma, she woke up not knowing her family and her body was weakened from lying still. But she never gave up and her family said they never gave up on her.
“She was a fighter, and she taught us to be fighters,” her daughter Heidi Gaines said.
Her memories came back, she got stronger and healthier, recognizing her family and ready to begin physical therapy, Heidi Gaines said. By late February Barbara moved into a nursing home, The Laurels of Chatham in Pittsboro, for rehabilitation.
But in early April, nearly halfway through Barbara’s recovery from surgery, Heidi Gaines said she got a call from the nursing home saying they needed to send her mother home. There had been an outbreak of the coronavirus, with three confirmed cases by that point.
She came back to her Goldston home with a cough on a Tuesday, Heidi Gaines said, but they thought maybe that could be her heart condition. By Easter Sunday, Barabara Gaines was back in the hospital, and a couple days later she tested positive for the coronavirus.
She died on Saturday, April 18 as family members stayed with her from the other side of a hospital window. She is one of more than 300 deaths in North Carolina from the virus.
“This virus robs you of all the special moments you can have; you can’t hold the hand of your loved one or sit with them,” Heidi Gaines said. “We could see her take her last breath. That meant a lot to us.”
‘An all-American family’
Gaines was born in Lee County as one of six kids on a small family farm. Her father drove a sand truck and her mother kept the house, where the family lived off what they grew and raised. She married Dennis Gaines her senior year of high school and they started their family two years later, raising three girls and then three boys. Tuesday, April 28 would have been their 53rd wedding anniversary.
“She was an all-American kid,” Heidi Gaines said. “She grew up in a loving, church family. ... I guess we were an all-American family too.”
Heidi Gaines said her mother raised she and her siblings to be self reliant, that they were at the stove cooking at 5 or 6 years old, that hey learned to work in the gardens. There was always a pot of beans simmering on the stove and a hen roaming the yard.
Dennis Gaines was often away as a long haul truck driver and through her life, Barbara worked for Southern Supreme’s fruitcake factory and for J.S. Waters School in Goldston.
“When we grew up, we didn’t have a lot, but mom made whatever we had and made it feel like a lot,” Heidi Gaines said. “She taught us to be independent and how to take care of ourselves.”
But she also taught the kids to take care of each other, Gaines said. As adults the children remain close and look out for one another.
“I don’t know that you could ask for a better mother,” son Nick Gaines said. Between the six kids, Nick Gaines said, they missed only three days of high school. To his mother, there was no excuse big or small that could keep them from going to class, he said.
“When my mom was growing up, they didn’t make them go to school,” Nick Gaines said. “She believed that if you went to school you’d get this great education. It was her way of making sure we’d have better lives. Sick was no excuse.”
For the funeral, there were no tents or chairs due to coronavirus concerns. Loved ones gathered and spread out, others attended by video chat, joining those graveside in singing “I’ll Fly Away.” Heidi said the sun gleamed and the wind blew in the trees.
A final wish to see the chickens
Before open heart surgery, Barbara Gaines had one wish, Heidi said. She wanted to go home and sit on her porch and watch the hens and chicks — the bitties — run around the yard. She got to do that in the days between the nursing home and the hospital.
“I’m glad she did get to come home,” Heidi Gaines said.
Living and dying have been changed by the coronavirus. Heidi Gaines said it’s painful that her mother fought through a grueling surgery, only to contract the virus. She said she sees some not taking the virus seriously, but she urges people to take precautions and love the ones around you.
“They don’t think it’s going to affect them, but it will,” Heidi Gaines said. “Love the ones you still have because you don’t know when they won’t be there.”
This story was originally published April 29, 2020 at 1:26 PM.
