I had a friend named Dave. A year ago, Dave died.
On the anniversary of his death, I wanted to do my best to tell Dave’s story. But as I sit down to write it, I realize I can’t. Because I am still wrestling with my own story.
What is the problem? I am a storyteller. I knew Dave very well. I have had a year to process this death. I should be able to serve you up a steaming cup of laughs and tears about my relationship with Dave. But I am realizing now that I am not even close to understanding his death and what it meant to me.
I was in LA when I got the news about Dave’s death. Being away from the Boston music scene during the days that followed was frankly terrible. I had lots of great phone calls about Dave, but felt isolated from the group grieving that happened. I needed to cry and hug and was shut off from it by 3000 miles.
Social media posts helped. I logged on with much higher frequency to read all the tributes and outpourings of love for Dave. For all of social media’s negatives, it definitely helped me feel closer during the immediate aftermath of Dave’s death.
And then… it stopped. People started posting about other things in their lives. Rationally, I knew that this was inevitable. But something inside me screamed “No! We don’t just stop talking about him! Dave wasn’t just some guy! We don’t say ‘RIP,’ post a picture, and move on with our lives!”
Of course, moving on with our lives is exactly what we have to do. But I wasn’t ready to get out of (as my friend Nate said) the “basking in Dave” phase into the longer term living with the loss. And I still don’t feel ready. Which is why writing this is such a struggle, even a year later.
Also, am I qualified to tell Dave’s story? Is anyone? Many of his former bandmates and friends who want to pay tribute have to wrestle with the question: “Would Dave want this?” Unfortunately, Dave was a particularly quirky and complicated person so this question tends to send us all into a tailspin of second guessing. Perhaps that rabbit hole of unanswerable questions is a fitting tribute to Dave, himself no stranger to self doubt.
But for my sake, I’ve got to try. I feel compelled to commemorate Dave in an honest and meaningful way and this venue is the best I’ve got. So here is the Dave I knew:
Dave was unbelievably sweet and kind. He was an incredibly loving person who would wrap you up in a big hug that felt like you were being smothered by an elephant in an Afghan. For a large man like me, it is a rare treat to be hugged and made to feel small. A hug from Dave was a treat in which I would unabashedly indulge.
Dave was also a haunted house. He held a grudge if he felt slighted in any way. He would never tell the person about it, preferring the passive aggressive route of snarky comments and barely perceptible eye rolls. It was borderline comical when some of the tributes to Dave came out from people we knew he secretly resented. In fairness, those people had no idea. If Dave did not like you, you never knew. He would never intentionally hurt someone’s feelings. It wasn’t in his nature.
Where Dave was a truth teller was in his music. It was the one place where he consistently didn’t keep his feelings to himself. That was the area of his life where he showed the world his pain and longing. I love his songs so fucking much. It took me a few weeks after his death to be able to listen to The Rationales, but now I feel so lucky that we still have his voice around any time we miss him. We can just turn on his music and be aurally enveloped by his melancholy and his wit and his intelligence and his… Daveness.
Dave was an introvert who would be hurt when he didn’t get attention. He would get jealous of bands that were doing better than his, including those of his close friends. At the same time, he would be at every show, supporting those bands and truly loving the music. He somehow managed to be genuinely thrilled for his friends’ success and simultaneously resentful of his own perceived failures. Failures that were mostly in his head.
No one was harder on Dave than Dave. I had so many conversations trying to ground him to reality about what people thought of him and his music. He was truly beloved as a musician and a person. This is the thing that still makes me saddest about Dave. I don’t think he realized what he meant to people. I don’t think his self image would allow him to fully take in the love. I did my best to tell him I loved him every time I saw him. His health was always a battle and I would always say to him “Take care of yourself. We need you.” It became a ritual that we would say “We need you” to each other every time we parted. I knew that it was unlikely Dave and I would be old men together, but still - I wanted more time.
Dave would bail on plans all the time. But somehow he was also the most reliable friend you could ask for. He felt like a presence in my life that would be eternal. When I returned home to Boston for the first time after his death, I went to a rock show. I don’t believe in spirituality in any way, but I felt like he was sitting on a specific stool in the corner, making wiseass comments about people in the scene taking themselves too seriously, a common Dave pastime. So in a way, it didn’t matter if he bailed on a particular show or event. He was such a presence that even when he wasn’t there, he was still there.
Ultimately, Dave was a work in progress. And his progress was stopped way too soon. Perhaps this is the part that I am having a hard time dealing with. I loved Dave for not only what he was, but what he was becoming. At the time of his death, he had just started new relationships and new bands and new sources of joy and happiness and love. He was just getting started. I feel robbed of more songs, more wiseass comments, more hugs. He has been gone a year and I feel robbed of a year’s worth of Dave. However many years I have left, it sucks that they will all be Dave-less. And that is not something I will - or want to - ever get past.
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