Gail Glesener
Bridget
I was 24 when I came into the family. But everyone knew Gail in River Ridge because Gail was the hot number at Paradise Manor. Navy blue bathing suit. Gorgeous figure. And she was always THE NICEST lifeguard out there. Never an ass. Always soft-spoken. And even when we were young. Of course she was 7 years older than me but I knew her when we were kids. We were a big catholic family just like the Fontenelles. I think everyone in River Ridge knew each other. Because I was at St. Matthews and my dad was the first ordained deacon there. We went to St. Matthews and Gail went to Chapelle but she knew my sisters.
I got to know her better when I started dating Charlie when I was 24. And of course, what we had in common was the girls. I had Jennifer and she had Danielle. So I think the first time I saw Gail in the family setting was December 1985. And I started going on all the Florida beach trips. Roy always had those beach trips organized, and that’s when I really got to know Gail during all those years that we were dating. As a mom, I was the hovering type and Gail was like “Oh - she knows how to swim, she’ll be fine.” So Gail was always VERY calm - the calming person in the big group of chaos. And with the Fontenelles there was always a big group of chaos. On those trips there were card games, and Aunt Arlene, and Roy would bitch, in a fun way but he would do his bitching. But she was daddy’s girl. For Roy, the sun rose and set with Gail. Roy absolutely adored her. Everyone was loud but Gail wasn’t … like I said, always the calming force in the chaos. And she would keep those guys in line because they would do stupid shit, like Wayne eating the lettuce while she was making the salad. She would keep her brothers in check. Gail was very motherly toward her brothers - especially the younger ones – and EVERYONE went to Gail for advice. I mean even I did. Because she just had that air about her. She was very intelligent and knew a lot about a lot of things. And I would talk to her about kids and parenting.
She was very relaxed about her kids. Way more than I was. I don’t know how she got the calming factor but she did, even with all of her running around and everything she had going on. On those trips Gail was always in the kitchen cooking … and she would always want the new bathing suit and whatever the new model of bikini there was, that’s what she would get. And the older I got, the relationship changed - because we became sister-in-laws. But really, at that time, I only saw her when she came in for Christmas and beach trips. I can’t really remember a whole lot of Jack being around, not sure why exactly, but of course they were divorced not that long after I came into the family.
But she just knew how to handle those boys (brothers) and they were all a pain in the ass and just loud but she was just a calming force and I think it was more like motherly. And everyone asked for advice and stuff from Gail. It’s not like she would intrude in anything – she just gave very logical advice and in a very calming way. And just a very good listener. She wouldn’t tell you what you were thinking was wrong, she would just give you a way to think of other ideas. Not to say you’re doing it wrong, but have you ever thought of doing it this way? She had a wealth of knowledge in her brain and a very good delivery. And I mean we dated for almost nine years before Charlie and I got married. And of course Rene was a loose cannon at that time because she was like 15, and just a kid, always doing stuff
that was getting her in trouble. But Gail was the big sister. Even with the hard-headed Fontenelles – like Charlie can be hard-headed but she could poke at him in a way that he could handle. She could say things that other people couldn’t say and people could actually hear it from Gail. I remember her saying to all of her siblings that “we’re all products of an alcoholic father,” and I think even sent them a book. And she’d be like “No you don’t understand, this is going to mess with you.” And she could even be stern with Charlie, which not many people can be. I know Wayne had picked Gail to be guardians of Chloe and Claire because he felt that she and Gail were very similar.
Now when Gail moved to Alaska it was like “oh my god” and that was a big deal in the family. And she was coming to the beach trips alone and at that time she was very stressed out about what was going on in Alaska. Because that guy was doing drugs and having people in the house and that’s when I started to see the sad side of Gail. She was not the calm person that she used to be. And we’d be on vacation but she’d be stressed talking about, “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.” A neighbor was calling her telling her that girls were coming into the house and that’s when I saw her more stressed out then. And Gail would sleep a lot. That’s when I really started to notice her sleeping … and “I’m on vacation and I want to nap.” And I think that was kind of her way of tuning out from it and coping with it. But even with all that we still always had a lot of fun because our girls were buddies and really no one else had kids. For a long time it was only Danielle, Lauren, and Jennifer.
She moved from Alaska back to Colorado and we made a couple of trips up to Colorado and I remember it was Wayne’s first time going skiing. And the Thanksgiving incident when Charlie came in with a Turkey that still had feathers in it, and were like, “What the hell are we supposed to do with this?” It was like a condo she lived in then … but Gail … Gail didn’t sweat the small shit. Nothing ever got her all wigged out. She’d be like, “I have small kids - you can sleep in their bed - oh wait, I think they probably peed in it.” Like, “oh well, looks like you’re going to have to sleep with a little pee.” I never got the impression from Gail that she was overwhelmed, though. We never talked about her job but she never seemed overwhelmed until later in life. Now she might have been - I just didn’t see it. I think she
must have been because I was a single mom of one for ten years and I know how it felt for me, and she was a single mom of two. But she always had that calming nature about her. Even with everything she was dealing with. And those two little girls – I just couldn’t believe those little girls getting on airplanes and flying here and there. I couldn’t have done it as a parent but Gail could and they seemed fine with it.
When Mark came on the scene they seemed to me to be very compatible and they had the same personality. Like, let’s just sit and read. Almost more of an introvert. Very okay with just going to sit by himself in the room with chaos and just read a book. And that’s really the only other guy I saw her with. They seemed really, really good together. That’s why everything was such a shame about the way it worked out. Because they seemed mentally on the same path … very calming with each other and just very similar. Charlie and I were always wound too tight but with Gail and Mark they were just kind of quiet and it seemed like that was okay.
We had a great time at their wedding, even though it was FREEZING and snowed. But I remember Gail with the long hair and she loved her wedding dress because it was very bohemian and it was just really, really nice and we froze our asses off but we had a wonderful time. I remember the girls sledding on some little hill close to where they were living and Jennifer was all up in that, too. And Gail just seemed very happy. And then I would just see them when they would come for Christmas every year. At some point the beach trips stopped happening with Roy. But we would still go down for a trip and even shared a condo with her and Mark. Nona’s friends had found a place called Sunswept and we went there every year for years. It was the whole family, Gary and Susie and Johnny and Penny, and Rene was still married to John and she hadn’t even had Emily for some of the earlier trips.
Gail did a good job at hiding a lot of stuff that was going on with Mark. Because it was before Jennifer got married that we found out … Gail shared in conversations … this might have been around 2007 that she and Mark were having issues. Because he wasn’t supposed to come to Jennifer’s wedding and then all of a sudden she brought him. And then we were like “oh shit, how do we treat this?” And we knew he was doing some kind of drugs because of his mouth movement and I remember Gail sitting outside and just keeping Mark away from a lot of people. And she didn’t interact a whole lot. She wasn’t her calm self back then once those kinds of things happened. And then nobody knew what to say to him.
She was an excellent mother - she was the mother that I wanted to be in a lot of ways. Just. calm. Gail never yelled, I don’t think I EVER heard Gail yell. And I was like, “Shit - this chick is just cool as a cucumber,” and Gail always just had all this healthy stuff around and the kids would go into the fridge and have yogurts and whatever and I would say “shit, why can’t I be this chilled out?” She just never yelled and I wished I could have been more like that. We were both great mothers, there’s just different deliveries. She always let her girls do way more than I would let mine, but she would just say “well, they’re going to screw up - so let them screw up.” She liked them just figuring things out. So it was just two totally different approaches. She was very nurturing, but also she didn’t have a problem letting her kids realize natural consequences.
She was Nona’s best friend - I truly believe that and always felt that. Now I know Ruth would drive Gail crazy because she would say, “You need to leave dad - why are you doing this?” But from an outsider looking in, Ruth and Gail were VERY close. Nona would go up there and help Gail at the drop of a hat, and Gail needed the help. I know that when Gail went up to Boulder she didn’t have anybody and I feel like Ruth went up there a lot. When Rene got cancer - at 27 years old she was diagnosed with Hodgkin's right before her wedding - Gail dropped EVERYTHING to go to MD Anderson and be there for her and mom and her sister. So she and Nona were always very close. And Gail was a mother figure to her brothers and she was very, very present with Rene for as much as she could be.
I talked to Gail a lot more after her accident when she went septic. Because we were both “room moms” with their schools - and Helen and Andre are only months apart – so that brought us closer. And then she had that Lathroscopy because she was trying to have another baby. And she was trying to get the endometriosis taken care of with that procedure, and they nicked her colon and then things went to hell in a handbasket. She was REALLY sick and went into a coma.
It was terrifying. And I remember kneeling in our bathroom and I did a nine-hour novena prayer for her. And Charlie went up there even though Mark didn’t want anyone up there, and Charlie said “fuck this, I’m going up there.” And I remember having conversations with Gail about when she was in the coma. And she told me “It felt like I was in a well and I was naked and I could hear people praying all around me and all I could think to myself was ‘how am I going to get out of here? I need to get out of here.’” Divine intervention on that one because they thought she was going to die. And they said she had a 50% chance of her coming out of it. And I remember me and her talking about her time and what she remembered. And of course we talked about weight because we were always trying to lose weight. And she lost 30 pounds in the coma and joked about how it was nice to wake up 30 pounds lighter - I mean it wasn’t funny but what are you going to do? But she came back and we had a wonderful time at Wayne’s wedding in California and she had a wonderful time and even went on the hike.
I remember we went up to Colorado for a Saints game and that was a BIG realization when we realized just how screwed Gail was with the whole Mark thing. And we had started to see the memory stuff because she would call to say happy birthday on the wrong day and stuff like that, but Rene started noticing more stuff – like she never could remember their address or sent cards at the wrong time. And when we went up to Denver for the game we realized Mark had a big problem and Gail was a wreck and saw lots of notes she was leaving for herself. Like there were sticky notes all over the refrigerator. And I remember me and Gail having telephone calls about Helen. Because we would talk on the phone about different things here and there to catch up and I remember her being really worried about Helen because she didn’t want to get up to go to school and stuff like that. But it was a very weird trip and we started realizing there was a lot more going on than we had realized.
So I remember Wayne going up to Denver because they were going to get the divorce but then the judge wouldn’t grant it. And after we went up there for that game, Charlie was like – they had tried to talk to Gail a lot about moving back here – but she was like “I can’t get a job down there.” But when Wayne died, Charlie started saying more to her, “Well, you need to get down here.” Somehow Charlie convinced Gail that she did NEED to get down to New Orleans. She was losing jobs and trying to go to interviews and couldn’t find it, would get lost. I know she had come down for Christmas and that’s when they left Helen down here and Charlie went back up with her to help Gail sell the house. Basically they did an intervention and she finally succumbed to their recommendation for her coming back. And Dan was on the scene then and helping clear out the house. And I just took over Gail once she got down here. And there was never any “Okay, Bridget you’re going to do this.” And I’m not sure how I wound up doing it but I did. I was always very close to Gail. And it just kind of built, and I remember saying, “Okay, I’m going to help you pay all your bills.” And we’d sit down and walk through all of it and then I would go over a week later and realize she didn’t remember anything we had talked about. Or she would move things and not remember where she moved it. And I thought “Wait a minute, we’re dealing with something here that’s more than anything we realize.” And one day I was helping her write a check and she just looked at me and said “Would you just do this?” And I realized she couldn’t even write a check and then I just kind of took it all over. And said, “We have to do a diagnosis.” And we took her to the doctor, and she was fine with all of that. It had to be so hard for her as such an extremely smart woman. I’m a caretaker and motherly type and then that was it – there was nobody else that even asked to do anything, they just kind of let it happen. When I say “they” I mean the people in New Orleans. People weren’t in the kind of place to step up the way I could. And in a way, they didn’t really want to – they just kind of let it go - and it was fine. I just said, “Okay, I’m all in.” And we had fun in the beginning, it just became more and more difficult as she lost more and more memory. And I was happy. I almost felt honored for myself. I never saw it as a burden. It was just something I was doing because she was just such a sweet and loving person and I didn’t work. I mean I was taking care of my mom and dad too, but it fell that way and I’m happy it did.
But helping Gail when she came back down here … shel was just happy and always very appreciative. And as time went on, she always made a joke like “how did you get this job?” And I would say “you want your brothers?” and she would say, “no!” It was very hard to convince her siblings how to talk with her without challenging her. Like, don’t say to her “do you remember this?” And it took a while to get them to realize it.
I remember taking her - because I had an MRI and all these things done for her – and when the doctor gave the diagnosis that particular time I didn’t feel like it sunk in. But there was a time in particular when the lightbulb went off in her head. There were three days when she knew she had early onset dementia and she was like, “What is going to happen to me?” And she was upset. Like, “what is going to happen? What am I going to do?” And I was like, “You don’t need to do anything because I’m going to take care of you.” But she knew for those three days and it did break my heart. Because we would sit in the psychiatry department and she knew when we went there that she couldn’t answer the questions. And it was in one of those visits that she realized she was screwed. And Ruth was upset because she had talked to her mom about it and she had a real moment that lasted about three days. And I remember telling Ruth that she was going to forget again and if there’s any saving grace with this horrible disease it’s that it won’t burden her mind forever. And that’s exactly what happened, she just forgot about it and went on with life, and that was a relief.
I mean, she still knew that when we got in the car it was probably because we were going to the doctor and so I would have to bribe her with a starbucks or something. But she always had grace, even when it got bad. She was always agreeable. Like that part of her personality didn’t go away. Ruth was a hindrance at that point, like trying to bring her pots back into the kitchen after Gail had put one in the microwave. But Gail had grace even in the hardest times. Like that part of her personality was just ingrained. She was just very kind and loving. Even in the worst of times. It was very sad to watch somebody SO intelligent just slowly fade away. And even the head psychiatrist said, “She’s just so intelligent - like she is just so above everybody else at this stage.” And that definitely helped her cope with her condition longer. Had she not been, maybe she would have deteriorated even quicker. And god doesn’t give you more than can handle and I’m just so glad that I could handle it and it was grace given to me - divine intervention for sure.
I knew Gail when she was 100% and I knew her at the end. And I’m just glad I was there at the end. And Gail wanted so badly to be a grandmother and she would have been such an amazing grandmother. But I believe she’s still here – I believe she’s here with Vivienne, and Quin and Johanna.