Yes, after a mercifully brief few days in hospital, David died from a combination of diabetes, lung cancer and liver failure, according to his sister Deb who was with him in his last days. His close friend who lives nearby, had found him unconscious on the floor and took him to hospital on Tuesday 21 October at the prompting of Glenda who had felt all was not right after a phone call with David that same day.
He remained in and out of consciousness for several days even, at one point, enjoying a cigarette from an illicit stash on a bench outside the hospital. Then, after being told there was no way he was going home again, kind of gave up and lapsed into unconsciousness at the care facility where they had moved him.
Those of us who stayed in touch with David over the years, enjoyed a good friend even if most contact was by phone or email. Thank God for e-mail! And thanks in so may ways goes out to his close friend Mickey who happily lives close to David in Sacramento who was able to go right over and get him to hospital. David would probably have preferred to stay home and die in his chair with his cats and computer on his lap, but who was to know how serious his condition was. No one seems sure if he even did.
David and I stayed in touch from the time he left ACP and reconnected in person in our Junior year in Ohio when I arrived at Ohio Wesleyan University (a big mistake!) and he was already at Ohio State. We spent many weekends smoking, drinking rot gut Chianti and making even the cats cringe with our guitar playing and, even worse, our singing. We took one memorable trip down to the Gulf coast of Florida during the worst of the winter where we both thought the other was steering as we gazed at a huge full moon while we motored down the freeway in my ancient VW Bug. Someone was watching over us that night!
Later, I attended his wedding with his wife Pat, something I had no recollection of until a year or so ago I stumbled across the negatives and checked with David. (If anyone wants to see the online album I made for him and which he kindly gave me permission to use as part of a fledging “Wedding Portfolio“.
But since then, we sent regular or sporadic tape letters (we were both to lazy to actually write!) and then when email arrived depended mainly on that. From time to time as my wife and I made a trip to Napa Valley, we would connect, and when David came south we did the same. Never enough and never long enough.
I will miss our discussions and the sense of a long time friend which whom I shared the ups and downs of a life-time of thoughts, fears and progressions through the mine fields of life.
Feel free to add your memories and comments.
Peter
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