So I met Gail at a fair in downtown Denver.  It was called the People’s Fair.  I was there sitting on the ledge to see my friend in a band - who was playing there - and I was there with a girl I was dating. She was sitting on one side of me and on the other side was Gail.  And we started talking and it turned out SHE was there to see someone in a band too, and it was the same person!  And she worked with him at U.S. West.  And I worked with him at U.S. West.  So we work at the same place?  So we just started talking and clicking and not long after that I was single again and asked Gail out.  So we worked at the same place but I had never met her until that day.  She was quite new there and I was, too.  

 

So we started dating pretty shortly thereafter.  Got married about two years later in November 1993.  She had not gotten an annulment so we dated longer than we would have before we got married.  We wanted to do it right so while she was legally divorced she was married in the Catholic church and we wanted to be married again in the Catholic church so she had to get the previous marriage annulled. Which she eventually did.  

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Gail was just FULL of life.  She’s a magnet to people and people were drawn to her and her aura and the way she carried herself.  Obviously beautiful and just a really wonderful human being.  So we were married in November 1993 and Helen was born in October 1994.  Helen was born exactly 10 months after we got married.  Gail was 39 and I was 29 when we got married and NO ONE would have known it with how young she looked.  The age difference was never a problem for me because she was just so full of life and it didn’t bother me for a second.

 

She LOVED, absolutely LOVED being a mother.  She was very nurturing and caring and so natural at it.  But she was a big career woman, too - she made both work. 

 

She had a PhD in Industrial Psychology and human-computer interface was her specialty and we met doing this very large project with the phone company, basically re-doing their billing systems.  And she was my introduction into that speciality and certainly taught me a lot.  Definitely a career woman who was in demand and worked at several places doing that kind of highly specialized work.  At one point she even had a team in India when she was working for a company called Quirk and they were sort of a competitor to Adobe in publishing - newsletters, publications, sort of thing.  And they automated the publishing process.  And so again, very important to be able to allow a user to get that done in the most efficient way in interacting with the computer and that was her speciality.  And so she would have to be an advocate for the user who used the computer and try to make their job as easy and intuitive as possible.  

 

Her speciality was very unique and very important and she was so good at it - just a natural at it - and hence why she was in demand.  She already had the ability to deal with people and know how to talk and interact and then she had the ability to translate it to a computer.  But she had several transitions between companies while we were working - partly because people wanted her - but also because it was so highly specialized, she might be brought on for one specific project and depending on what’s happening with the company, and whatever way they shift course, she could be off that project quickly. Just sort of the nature of the work she did.

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She also had a lot of passions outside of work.  One of her biggest was gardening.  And she in fact became a master gardener - as in, she went to classes sponsored by the city of Denver and got a certification, which included doing volunteer work and all of that.  Her gardens at the house were just amazing.   And in turn, she was required to give a certain amount of hours back to other people.  She learned so much and boy did she use it.  

 

She was very big into art.  She would spend a lot of time drawing, in pencils - a lot of pencil work - I think she eventually got into colors and all of that.  And eventually even got into pottery and taking classes for that too. She loved American Indian art and culture.  As we decorated our cabin, that theme wove into a lot of what she placed there.  

 

So she really lived life to the fullest but she was also very much a “go with the flow” person.  She would go fishing, motor-cycling.  She would embrace new things.  I mean the biggest thing she embraced was probably the cabin.  It was 2/22/92 that we bought 11.5 acres in the mountains.  And we ended up building a cabin and spent a LOT of time up there.  The year Helen was born we started to actually build the cabin, and we spent a lot of time up there.  

 

She was a wonderful cook too - and fed a lot of people while we were building the cabin.  People would rave about the Gumbo and stuff she would make.  The dirty rice.  We did a lot of camping out while we were building it.  And family and friends came out for a week / week and a half and we got a big chunk of the structure up. And she was instrumental in feeding everyone and keeping everyone’s spirits up. 

 

One thing she would do almost every day religiously was walk the dogs.  She started sort of collecting dogs.  She and I had this dog Zack.  And Zack passed away and we got Zena.  And then she got this Shih Tzu dog from New Orleans from her brother and sister-in-law and then we got a couple of other dogs.  But she loved walking those dogs and there was a cemetery just a few blocks from our house and that place had miles of paths to walk and she did that on a regular basis.

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She ABSOLUTELY LOVED her family, and traveling to New Orleans.  And her family traveled up to us several times as well.  But it seemed like several times a year we went down there.  She absolutely loved her mom and dad.  And it was always a real good time going down there and getting together with her family.  The holidays obviously but made it a point to make it to a Mardi-Gras here and there.  French Quarter Fest, stuff like that.  She really liked music and saw so many shows.  When she was pregnant with Helen and we knew we wouldn’t see too many shows for a while, we saw Aerosmith, Rolling Stones and Bonnie Rait.

 

She was athletic, too.  She was a really good golfer, and enjoyed that.  I’ve always loved it but she came in knowing how - because of her brothers.  She loved soccer and used to play it but her knees got messed up and loved softball too but her knees gave her a hard time with that as well.  And she was a coach to Helen for so many years playing soccer.  And Helen was a wonderful soccer player.  Ever since Helen was 3 feet tall until she was about 10 or 11 or around there - Gail was really involved in her soccer. 

 

Gail as a mom was just always really involved and really nurturing.  I was probably more conservative and all of that and Gail with all the girls was very open, honest, and direct – and just a very good parent that established proper boundaries and all of that but was very different from how I grew up and my natural tendency to parent.  And it was very nice and very cool to see how she was able to communicate and work with the kids.  

 

Around 2010 or 2011, her memory issues started to become apparent. We were doing taxes or something and I would write things down and say - this is exactly what we need to do and fill out this spreadsheet and say “okay, everything you need is right there.” And I was traveling for work quite a bit  to San Francisco, working at the Black Hawk Network, and would be out of town 3 or 4 days and she just couldn’t track anything I had told her.  And then it was alarming.  And I could piece together clues from that … and it really started to affect her work, too.  And she started losing jobs and things.  I know I was traveling to San Francisco at that point and was working at the Black Hawk Network.  This was around 2010 or 2011.  

 

I know - when I went off the deep end and started getting lost in my addiction – that woman just prayed and prayed and prayed.  And would just say the rosary and pray and pray all the time.  And it was just so special.  And so her faith was so important to her.  She was raised a Catholic and had fallen away, and was so relieved to find a guy who could bring her back and she really loved coming back into the church.  And she was deep into it and it was such a shame that I got lost - I mean never lost my faith but I completely lost my way -  and she just clung onto that rosary and prayed and prayed.  And as a result of all those prayers, I am talking to you now and I am finally the person I was supposed to be. She was just phenomenal and really never wanted to let go despite me losing myself and finally losing my life.  And as her mental decline got worse, her family just came and took her away, and that was probably the best thing.  And it totally crushed me but I had crushed her.  Her family loved her so much they came and took her into a new situation in New Orleans.  They loved her so much and they tried to help her the best way they knew.  But she never wanted any of that, she just wanted me back from addiction.  And that is what it is.  But I just remember her praying all of the time.  

 

So she was so supportive and had so much faith but she had things she wouldn’t stand for too and she had her outlets and used them.  I mean she filed for divorce while I was in treatment, so she was sending all the right messages, I just couldn’t hear them at the time.  My addiction had just taken over.  And I was way too confident in my ability to fix myself to take on what other people were offering.  But she would get advice and counseling in terms of whatever she needed, so she advocated for those things.  But I know she went through hell.  

 

It’s the biggest biggest regret of my life.  But she was an amazing person.  Just absolutely amazing.