Remembering My Cousin—Gail Abbott

Yesterday Leslie, one of my two cousins on the Abbott side of our family, called to tell me her sister Gail had died on the 16th. We shared our sorrow at the profound loss. And we shared memories from the summers spent in Windsor, Colorado with Grandma Abbott. Dad’s brother Jack and sister-in-law Betty lived on a big adjoining lot with Gail and Leslie. Gail was a year older than I, Leslie a year younger.

We were there while Dad was working on a Master’s Degree at Colorado State College (now the University of Northern Colorado) in Greeley (my birthplace). We swam in chilly Windsor Lake, we attended Bible School at Grandma’s Methodist Church, we played night games, Grandma took me down to the drugstore where she had coffee with friends and bought me a soda I nursed at the comic book stand, we picked apples and mulberries…all the things that young cousins get up to.

Gail followed passions for music and Baha’i spirituality to Montana, where she and a friend recorded an album produced by the newly established Black Paw Music. The cover photo for the album is Gail’s, taken during a visit to the Baha’i World Center in Haifa.

I told Leslie that when we were done talking I would take out the album and play it again, for the first time in maybe three decades. Seven of the eleven songs are written, composed, and sung by Gail.

Gail’s voice, I found again, is clear, bright, assured, and beautiful. Listening in the context of her passing, I was filled with wonder—she’s still here … in my ear and in my heart.

“How do I tell my friends whose faces are but memories,” she sings, “That the love we share will always be a sacred part to me?” “Searching for a song whose words I just can’t find.” You’ve found that song, I answer.

Most of Gail’s songs are love songs, sad songs as songs of love so often are: “Why did you ever start to roam? / Memory blames the love, you know, / And will you ever love again?”

The album’s final song, “Gingham,” celebrates her feelings for a wearer of the titular cloth (or is this a striped and checkered metaphor?): “Now when the sun comes shining in the morning / I find a song in my heart / And I’m sure mighty glad that I fell in love with you / And my heart’s singin’ louder every day. / Hi-dee-ho, Hay-dee-hay / I’m in love with you.”

The sun is shining this morning Gail, and I’m sure mighty glad that you left this album.

Lyn and I last saw you Gail (you against the wall), your dear partner Sue, and Leslie at a Denver restaurant. I’m sure mighty glad to be your cousin.