Memories of Gabe

My hazy memories of meeting Gabe are in soft focus. He was so handsome, tall, shy, and a little bit nervous at this party San Francisco when we were both 25.  My Lair of the Bear friends were his Cal friends. We had an instant connection and ended up being together for 6 years. For a long while there we created a life together filled with fun, adventure, exploration and discovering who we were and what kind of life we wanted to live. Incredibly formative years.

We lived a couple blocks from each other in the Castro. I remember there were huge cement slides at the park across the street from his house. We would slide down them on cardboard pieces with all the other kids. 

We learned shamanic journeying together, intuitive work, psychic training,  and meditation. We were on a spiritual seeking path and fascinated to learn more about ourselves and the new realms that were opening up to us. We spent 2 years learning from our teacher Mary Swanson with our group of friends. Every week we all met in the cafe next door before class and ate crepes and drank tea before meditating and honing our intuition together. So many talks about aliens and past lives and all our connections and agreements. 

I remember him sitting on his floor in San Francisco surrounded by canvases, working with spray paint, caulking guns, color, acrylics and plastics. Just playing and experimenting with materials and layering. He painted the same characters and figures that he had always doodled. It was a vibrant time of pure expression. He quit his job and declared he was an artist. And he was.

When I turned 30 we had a party at his house. He asked everyone who was over 30 to bring some words of wisdom for me and everyone under 30 received some bits of knowledge from my vast years of experience. I wore a crown of flowers and he created a circle where we all went around to share these words.

We moved to Oakland and Gabe had an art studio in our garage. It was full of paintings and music. He had many a night back there staying up til dawn in his own world. 

We visited his family in Seattle, New York, Michigan, Bali, and even traveled around Europe together with them. In my first meeting with his parents in Seattle, Bonnie taught me how to caramelize onions. She likely would never remember this but still to this day I think of her whenever I do it. Cook them low and slow for as long as possible. :) We ate outside in the backyard and the bees swarmed us. I was trying to play it cool and stay calm. We visited his Uncle Bill in New York with his beautiful kids Ben and Mabel. When I met baby Mabel I really knew for sure that I wanted kids. Bill has always since called himself my Uncle Bill and when my sister lived in New York he adopted her too. We all went to Germany for his cousin Bridget’s wedding. Afterward Uncle Bill rented a van and we toured around. Gabe, Che, Ben, Mabel, Bill and me. We visited castles and small towns and fell in love with Salzburg, Austria. For years and years after we would laugh about the funny faces Mabel made on this trip.

In the end we did share a life-long friendship. We were not meant to be partners in the way we once thought. We were sad at one point that we'd end up just a "footnote" in each other's lives. But our time together stayed with us and made us who we became. We managed to stay friends, entwined with our Tribe. Over the years we had long phone calls and many visits in Maui, Oahu, and Oakland. The years of history let us go deep and honest right away about relationships and family and pain and loss and joys. Some of our last texts and calls were about the loss of my dad where he remembered him so fondly and the loss of his friend whose memorial he had attended in Costa Rica. We always used our nicknames for each other from 20 years ago and it always cracked us up. I am eternally grateful that we maintained a friendship that would have been all too easy to let go. He befriended my husband and my kids. Another last text was a photo of my son helping out at City Eats that he snapped and sent to me. He knew I'd appreciate it. That was a great gift of his, as we have all seen in all these memories. Once you were in his life he kept you forever. 

I know his spirit visited me after he died. He let me know that something had shifted and he needed attention. I didn't know exactly what had happened but I knew I needed to get in touch with him. I reached out to him and friends and soon learned that he had passed into the next realms, exploring those dimensions we learned about together. 

Thank you to all his family and friends who are lovingly remembering the legacy of Gabe. He lives on in the love and creativity in all of us. His life force is strong. I am so grateful for the time I spent with him and all my love goes out to his family and friends.

A friend posted this exquisite essay on love and grief on FB. I think it is so fitting and accurate:

A woman called Cynthia wrote to musician, writer and actor Nick Cave and asked him how he deals with the death of his son, Arthur.

Arthur died in 2015, aged 15, after a fall from a cliff.

This is how Cave replied:

This is a very beautiful question and I am grateful that you have asked it.

It seems to me,

that if we love,

we grieve.

That’s the deal.

That’s the pact.

Grief and love are forever intertwined. Grief is the terrible reminder of the depths of our love and,

like love,

grief is non-negotiable.

There is a vastness to grief that overwhelms our minuscule selves.

We are tiny,

trembling clusters of atoms subsumed within grief’s awesome presence.

It occupies the core of our being and extends through our fingers to the limits of the universe.

Within that whirling gyre all manner of madnesses exist;

ghosts and spirits and dream visitations, and everything else that we,

in our anguish,

will into existence.

These are precious gifts that are as valid and as real as we need them to be.

They are the spirit guides that lead us out of the darkness.

I feel the presence of my son,

all around,

but he may not be there.

I hear him talk to me,

parent me,

guide me,

though he may not be there.

He visits Susie in her sleep regularly, speaks to her,

comforts her,

but he may not be there.

Dread grief trails bright phantoms in its wake.

These spirits are ideas,

essentially.

They are our stunned imaginations reawakening after the calamity.

Like ideas,

these spirits speak of possibility.

Follow your ideas,

because on the other side of the idea is change and growth and redemption. Create your spirits.

Call to them.

Will them alive.

Speak to them.

It is their impossible and ghostly hands that draw us back to the world from which we were jettisoned;

better now and unimaginably changed.

With love, Nick.

Some things in life are, as Cave says, non-negotiable.

Source: spin.com

Another video of The Color Box. I admire the capacities within Gabe :) !

I know it's helping a lot of people to read things, and see and hear what Gabe was about. Thanks for sharing videos, stories and feelings here.

Also, thanks to anyone who helped us last month during this tough time. Lot's of support and much appreciated.