Mother Mourns Adventurous Child : Tragedy: Police rule the youngster’s hanging an accident. Memory will haunt Yvette McGee for the rest of her life.

Gabriel McGee, a 5-year-old bundle of activity, curiosity and affection, brought joy into his mother’s life that she will never forget.

“He was my life,” Yvette McGee said on Sunday, three days after Gabriel was found hanging from a rope in the garage. “Everywhere I went, there was Gabriel with me. Wherever I go, everything reminds me of him.”

Most of the memories are happy ones: of an inquisitive child who, once he learned to talk, chattered from morning until night; of an adventurous boy who liked nothing better than to climb and swing on the monkey bars in the neighborhood park, and who once jumped into a swimming pool even though he couldn’t swim; of a son “who came and hugged me and said ‘Mom, I love you’ . . . I can’t tell you how many times a day,” his mother said.

But one memory haunts Yvette McGee right now, and it will stay with her the rest of her life. It is of her final moments with Gabriel last Thursday, when she found him in the garage behind their South Los Angeles home and futilely tried to breathe life back into his limp body.

“Oh my God, I tried so hard,” she said. Her brother, Steve McGee, clutched her trembling hand as tears streamed down her face. “Those few minutes, I see it every time I close my eyes.”

Paramedics rushed Gabriel to Daniel Freeman Memorial Hospital in Inglewood, but he was pronounced dead on arrival. A police investigation of the boy’s death found that it was accidental. Gabriel apparently climbed a lightweight aluminum ladder in the garage, slipped around his neck a rope tied to the rafters and then either fell or stepped off the ladder.

“There was no evidence of foul play,” Los Angeles Police Detective Larry Bennett said.

A memorial service for Gabriel will be held Thursday at 11 a.m. at Greater Cornerstone Baptist Church in Los Angeles.

Leo Green, McGee’s fiance and the owner of their house in the 5900 block of 8th Avenue, said the rope has been wrapped around the garage rafters for many years. His children, now grown, used to hang a punching bag from it, but that was cut down several years ago.

On Sunday, McGee recalled her last day with her son. “I’ve got to talk about it,” she said through tears and sobs when her brother asked if she wanted to stop.

The day had begun like so many others, McGee said. She and Gabriel had gone out for a walk--”always an adventure for Gabriel,” she said--and they visited Gabriel’s aunt and cousin so he could say goodby before leaving to see his father in Rhode Island.

“He was supposed to leave today,” McGee said. “He was so looking forward to seeing his father.”

After they returned from their relatives’ house, Gabriel went out back to play. It was trash day, McGee explained, and Gabriel wanted to bring the garbage cans in and put the lids back on. She checked on him, then went inside to call her father back home in New Orleans.

“Dad wasn’t there, but I talked to my cousin” for about 10 minutes, she said. “Then I said to her, ‘Gabe’s outside, do you want to talk to him,’ because Gabriel loves to talk on the phone. I called him, ‘Gabe, Gabe,’ but I didn’t hear nothing. I said to my cousin, ‘I don’t know what he’s into. He’s probably doing something he’s got no business doing.

“Then I went outside,” she said, her face contorted in pain, “and I saw him.”

McGee said she doesn’t know what Gabriel was thinking when he slipped the rope around his neck and accidentally hanged himself. “I know he didn’t go out there to do that,” she said. “He was so alive. He just didn’t know the full danger of it all.”