On the Water
Gay Delores (Griffin Hoisington Bostwick) Holten
July 16, 1931 – April 6, 2019
Gay Holten
Gay´s many surnames in themselves tell a story of a life not so easy and direct in its course, events which left their mark on her in so many ways.
Gay loved being on the water, and hers was a life in Bingen on the Columbia River, in a houseboat on Lake Union, on the shores of Lake Stevens, boating in Puget Sound on the “Nereid” and finally living on board the “Good News” for 8 years, in the woods of Darrington near the Sauk and the Stillaguamish Rivers, in a trailer beside a never-to-be-built house with an amazing view of Lake Roosevelt and finally in a duplex not far from the Snohomish River. Most of Gay’s life was spent caring for, and carrying others, as a daughter and a sister, as a wife and a mother. Perhaps she loved the water, where she could float in times of pain or dance on the waves in times of happiness, because it carried her?
After one year at Willamette College she ran out of money and left for Seattle with her girlfriend Faye, landing her first job in banking. Here she met a handsome and charming young man from Ballard, Dean Alan Bostwick. In 1952 she took a bus trip to San Antonio, Texas, and, wearing a smart navy suit with white polka dots, she married her “Dino”. No one could dance swing like Dean and Gay. No one. In 1953 she became a mother and so followed some 25 years of caring for the four that made her often threaten “to tear her hair out”.
Gay
Gay was active in Everett Jaycee Wives and together with Betty McIntosh started the first pre-school in Everett up at Forest Park. She was a Sunday School teacher at the First Presbyterian Church in Everett and a highly respected member of the banking community in Everett, Lake Stevens and Snohomish for many years. At the same time Gay drove to countless ballet classes, spent long nights sewing satin, sequins and tulle dancing costumes, sat on hard baseball bleachers and hosted countless baseball parties and drove to innumerable piano lessons and painting lessons. She put up with a house full of dollhouses and lego, sewed exquisite dresses, skirts, and suit jackets, even pajamas, for her active foursome, listened to hours of Mary Poppins and My Fair Lady, and closed her eyes to “pre-engineer” jerry-rigged boat theft alarms, keggers and evasive denials of grassy car tires. She took us camping, even 7 months pregnant when all she could fit into were Dean´s paratrooper pants. And every single night four dirty but contented children were bathed in a galvanized tub in a canvas tent and put to bed clean, with a treasure trove of happy memories to revisit the rest of our lives. She courageously functioned far outside her comfort zone on family snow skiing vacations. She let one of us read Margaret Mead at the age of 12, and opened eight small wondering eyes to history, literature, music and the ballet. She never once told us that we couldn´t achieve our dreams.
In 1977 she married her second husband and true partner Melvin Chester (Chet) Holten, only to immediately have to carry him/care for him through a bout of cancer. Happily, Chet and Gay proceeded to enjoy 22 years of boat-life, rock-hunting, and snow-birding together. We missed her carrying/caring but saw her happiness. In Chet she had found someone who truly wanted to be with her, only her, all the time and everywhere.
After Chet passed away, all four wild children now adults, she travelled to Norway, Machu Pichu (a life-long dream), the Mediterranean, the Galapagos and Alaska. With the help of HSN Home shopping network she sparkled, glittered and was the cutest dressed Grandma around. In the wake of countless family cats and dogs, she chose, named and totally and irreversibly spoiled her first ever “all by herself” dog, Keshi. She could be trusted to bring Grandma Orlena’s delicious three-day buns to every family event.
Gay loved deeply, though sometimes neither clearly nor directly, but she loved us all, her brothers and her sister, her nieces and nephews, and as different as we all are, her children, her grand-children and her great-grandchildren.
Gay is survived by her brothers Robert Hoisington and David Hoisington, her sister Martha Lehnert, her four “that kept her pretty busy” Lisa Gay Bostwick, Claire Allyn Kline, Ross Wayne Bostwick and James Dean Bostwick, five grandchildren Kyrre, Trygve (Mathilde) and Helge Bostwick Bjerck, Janna (Kline) Rinker (Chuck) and Jordan Kline (Adriana) and 4 great-grandchildren, Lina and Joey Rinker and Enir and Aila Lovise Bersvendsen Bjerck and nieces and nephews.
Gay helped us all get where we are today in so many ways. “You always have options” was her encouraging comment of choice. We miss having someone on our side, someone with faith in us, and we forever thank her for the fact that we are four and learned how to work hard and shoulder responsibility. She always said, “if it is worth doing, it is worth doing well”.
Gay is free and at peace now, surely on the water, the softest of all things yet the most powerful, the shimmering, beautiful blue water.