Monday, November 24, 2025
A Few Words About a Lost Friend and About Death
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| Dave D on his last visit to Edmonton early this year. I drove 6 hours to see him, Russ about 3 hours. |
My friend Dave D died on November 11. This was expected, but it turns out that doesn't make it any easier.
Some day I will have to write about the Group of Seven: not the artists, but seven guys who stumbled across each other in a variety of ways during their school days, who filled all sorts of locations on a Venn diagram that shifted in all over the map over the decades.
Dave is the second of us to die, and also the second Dave. Dave W, halfway around the world in the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu, left us just over three years ago. That loss was an unexpected shocker and I do miss him, but Dave D was an older friend and, even though he lived a distance away, remained closer. Such is the nature of friendships.
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| Dave D's first wedding. L-R standing are Don, Rob, Russ, Dave W and Tim holding Dave D. I'm peeking out from underneath Four of the five of us were able to fly out to Ontario in June to see Dave, to remind him of our love and remind ourselves of his love for is. That's a rare opportunity too few of us get, and I do recommend that if you're in such an awful position but able to have that visit you do so.  L-R Tim, Russ, Dave D, Rob and me on our last visit. Dave's funeral was today. In Ontario, so we couldn't make it, sadly, but I was already driving to Edmonton and so with Tim and his wife Doneta, Don and his wife Janice and Rob and his wife Roxanne we watched it together online. Russ and his wife Denise watched from their home near Calgary, and my wife Jo watched it during her lunch hour at work back in Saskatoon. I wrote something to be read at the funeral. The minister in charge stumbled over it a few times, but he stumbled over quite a bit that wasn't mine so I'm pretty sure it wasn't me. I post it here for anyone who heard it and wanted to read it, and for those who weren't able to be there, in person and virtually: There’s a void when a close friend dies, what seems an empty chasm where the only echoes you hear are from the pain and the loss. You stutter step through your own life and try to ignore it all, but — eventually — that void begins to fill, with memories and knowledge and joy and love. Yes, cracks of grief spike through this new structure, but without them we wouldn’t know how special the rest of it is. How lucky we are to have it. Dave, if memory serves, was 12 when we met, and I 14. Almost 50 years! He’d moved in across the street and we hit it off right quick. I already had friends, of course, and over the years made other new — some very special — friends. It’s a sign of who he was that my friendships so easily became his friendships, that the closeness of our group of seven was not hindered at all by the age difference that so easily could have been a stumbling block. Digging up that memory reminds me of my first words to Dave: “I know what that’s like,” I said, as he picked up poop left behind by his dog Goldie. The memory of those first words then brings back the memory of the glare he gave me. And so two furnishings plug their little corner of that void and I’m off and running. Those first memories are bookended by our last words: “I love you, brother,” and “I love you too;” and by a wonderful visit in June when we were able to deliver a terrific surprise, where his reaction will live with me forever. Between that beginning and that end I’m blessed by decades of remembrances. Some I will eventually share with others, some I may forever hold close to my vest. All will give me comfort. I’m sad I’ll no longer create new memories with Dave, but I celebrate and will cherish those decades of memories populating this newly-created chasm. Seams of grief will always run through everything connected with my friend, but at its very worst that grief still highlights the laughter and tears, joy and love that showed me and a very special group just what friendship means.  |
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