David

Awhile back, I interviewed a few of Ted’s friends from elementary school, specifically about a surprise birthday party they threw for him when he was first in the hospital. When I told my mom that I was speaking with them, she said, “The only one who is missing is David.”

David wasn’t missing because he couldn’t make it, or I couldn’t track him down. David, who had been Ted’s best friend since second grade, is dead. He was killed in a car accident about six months after Ted died. They’re buried next to each other. After all these years, typing that truth still blows my mind.

David and Ted met in elementary school. David’s family lived about two blocks away from us. I don’t remember a whole lot about their friendship before the hospital. I do know that he was the one constant friend who visited Ted in the hospital for many, many years. As they got older, their interests evolved together, and both began to play the guitar, and visits turned into jam sessions. Eventually, in high school, David brought in Charlie, who also played guitar, and who also became a regular visitor in Ted’s “salon.”

I remember David as kind of a happy go lucky guy. Sweet. I remember him perpetually in jeans and a white Hanes T-shirt, with a smile so big it squinted his eyes. I thought of him as a bit of a brother stand-in, given his connection to Ted.

Right before he was due to go off to college, he stopped by the house to say goodbye. He promised to come again, when he was home. And then, within a month, he was gone, killed when he and three other boys decided to cram themselves into a two-seater sports car and take it out for a joy ride. The driver took a corner too fast and ran into a telephone pole. David, who was pretzled into the back, sustained a head injury he couldn’t recover from.

I can’t remember a lot about the aftermath. I can remember the disbelief when I heard. He died right around what would have been Ted’s 18th birthday. I can’t remember exactly how it evolved that he was buried next to Ted, but I know that everyone seemed to think it was fitting, somehow. Still, to go visit and see them both there, with their short lives spelled out in the dates on their stones…it’s a punch in the gut. Every time.

I’ve always wondered about reincarnation. My brother was obsessed with the military and wars, and he died on Memorial Day, at 17. I wondered if it evoked some former life as a young soldier, somehow. And here was an 18-year-old friend, buried next to him. Had they been fellow soldiers in another life?

I don’t know, of course. But the sight of them there like that does make me ponder questions like this. Maybe it’s just me trying to make sense of it all. It would be nice if things made sense, wouldn’t it? What I do know is that, in the aftermath of loss, the only sense is the one we make of it, how we choose to go on, or learn from it.

Losing my brother has made me relentless about self-growth. I’ve learned that most things, even a loss, are more survivable if you can make some kind of meaning of them, even if the event itself is, on the surface, meaningless. I wonder, sometimes, now, if that wasn’t part of how Ted got through his life in the hospital.

I don’t really know where to end this. The anniversary of my brother’s death is May 27th, and I can still feel the heat on my skin at the graveside service. I don’t remember David’s funeral at all. Now, when I visit, I bring flowers for both of them. And I wonder, if they’ve moved on to some other predestined life together. Anything is possible.