Been thinking a lot about the use of Gabe in "I've Been" especially when paired with the interpretation of Gabe being that of the manifested grief that each member of the Goodman family possesses.
For the first part of the song Dan is alone on the stage as he moves about preparing to clean his wife's blood from off the floor. He takes towels, gets a garbage bag ready, picks up the box of items and the toy car that had belonged to Gabe. As he does this he sings about not knowing how to help Diana, even though he knows he needs to. He expresses that he has fears that will go unheard, and wonders both how Diana could choose to leave him and that if the proposed ECT will even work if they try it, but he's become so weary and feels so helpless at this point that he's willing to try. He's always played the part of the grounded one because that's the role he's needed to play.
It's at this point in the song just as the end of the lyrics "oh now I need a lift, and there's no one around" that Gabe enters from the side. He's still dressed as we last saw him during I Dreamed a Dance and There's A World. He moves to his knees staring at the blood and then at Dan as he cleans it up before moving back and staring at the blood that's on his hands.
I've seen some interpretations of this moment being Gabe seeing what he's done/caused. I'm not here to say any of those are wrong, art can be interpreted many ways, but I wanted to talk about my own interpretation that I haven't really seen (it's possible someone else has made this same observation/interpretation and I just haven't come across it yet.)
This Gabe isn't Diana's Gabe. It's Dan's. It's Dan's manifestation and the representation of his grief and even guilt. It's his grief over his wife's attempted suicide which is tied to her grief over the loss of their son, the grief he has been repressing all these years. It's his guilt that he doesn't know how to help her and make things better. The guilt that he hadn't been able to stop it from happening.
With this I can't help but view the blood on Gabe's hands as a representation of Dan feeling some sense of blaming himself for not having seen the signs that led to this moment. That somehow Diana's blood is on his hands. Even in a prior moment / song in the show, I Am the One, we hear Dan ask "how can something go wrong that I can't see?" after it's revealed at the dinner that Diana is still seeing Gabe (and the reveal to the audience that the Gabe on the stage isn't real). You have to wonder how many times over the years has Dan blamed himself for not seeing the signs when something went wrong?
So as Dan wipes the blood up off the floor, now physically getting her blood on his hands, we, the audience, see him sitting there with a physical manifestation of his grief and guilt next to him on the stage as the two harmonize and wail in Dan's despair at the situation and in his sense of helplessness. There's even a moment during this where their body language even mimics each other, hands turned up with their palms red with Diana's literal and figurative blood
He laments "mine is just a slower suicide" and as the song continues we see Dan trying to slowly pull himself together as he pushes those feelings of grief that he's allowed himself for just a few seconds down and away. This being physically represented by Gabe no longer on the ground with him, but rather standing and moving towards off stage/out of the scene. He doesn't leave the stage/scene completely though. He remains now standing and looking down at Dan as Dan's focus goes back to focusing on Diana and how she's been hurt, while placing the trash bag of bloody towels at Gabe's feet. Dan's Gabe who encompasses his grief and guilt just staring down at them as Dan says that he can't give up now.
If he does there's no telling when this will happen again, and if that time it would be too late to save her. Because if he gives up and that does happen that means being alone. Something he hasn't been in all these years after Gabe's death. Something he fears, something once again reflected in the song I Am the One where he asks "Could you leave me? Could you let me go under?"
It's here we start to see Gabe leaving again as Natalie enters the scene to ask why he didn't take her with him (to the hospital.) Instead of answering Dan quickly collects himself, puts on a face, and does what Dan does and that is change the subject and turn the focus onto someone else. In this instance asking Natalie if Henry is a good influence. By this point Gabe is no longer there with them in the scene, instead standing in the darkness on the stairs, because Dan has repressed his grief once again.
