For David

For David 

I tried to find solace and comfort listening to music on Wednesday after I was informed of David's death, but it was a futile exercise. The news brought me to my knees and overwhelmed me. My mind was flooded with bits and pieces of memories from our youth and my brain began to mentally catalogue the countless mutual rites of passage  that we experienced together. What we learned about life and love and all that other stuff in between , we learned together. After all, he was for all purposes more a brother to me than a friend. I knew his house and backyard better than I knew my own. I always assumed that I was welcome there and ,like it or not The Millers had a third son in me.                                                                                I was always impressed with David's curiosity about everything- science, chemistry, model rocketry, race cars, mechanics, electronics and of course music. All of these things at such an early age but music was the thing that sealed our bond. When we discovered that , it gave us both a sense of direction and power. We played and sang together side by side for fifteen years or more and, to make things more interesting , we even found                                                                                       time to fight over the opposite sex.     

  Although we stayed in touch we did eventually each go our own way.

You know, college and all. Work and such. We went separate ways not intentionally but incidentally.  We made new friends that weren't mutual friends because we were pulled in two different directions. For a while David tried his hand at acting with Slidell Little Theatre and sang in a Barbershop Quartet too. I believe I was the very first patient he examined as Dr. Miller O.D.  when he happened to be showing me his new office on the day his equipment finally arrived. 

  I guess marriage changes a person. Having children does too. It is a natural progression though and David eased into the role of husband and father with his usual confidence. By its nature marriage alters existing friendships and different priorities emerge but David was always David. He was  a performer and a risk taker to boot. A pattern in his behavior became apparent as early as elementary school to me.  I admired his confidence and his willingness to get on the stage in Junior High and in High School whether to play or act. As far as his romantic conquests are concerned David confided in me often and he opened up to me about everyone and everything during long and protracted midnight drives in his car on the streets of Slidell. Maybe he didn't realize it at the time but in addition to listening I was also mentally taking notes. Let's face it , he knew how to get the girl.  Was he a Romeo? No I don't think so. But a charmer? Absolutely. Likeable and funny. I salute him for his game and I will admit  now that I was often jealous of it in my teenage years. No big surprise there.

  I still don't know where he got the notion that skydiving was a worthwhile endeavor but he tried that as well. And fishing? That was news to me. 

 Over the past two decades David and I had very little to say to one another. At a class reunion a couple of years ago, we barely said two words to one another the entire time. I'm prepared to say that it was my fault in that ,in this day and age with technology the way it is, I could have made the call and reached out to him. We could have spent a day together showing pictures of our kids and reminiscing about band bus trips and rock star ambitions from our past. We could have done it face to face easily.  Thanks to social media  I was instead able to piece together his life as a dutiful husband, proud father and  doting grandpa from afar. It was a laudable end to a well spent life and I was happy for him. Whether he thought about our friendship much in his later years I don't really know. 

  I recently was watching a television program and one of the characters said something that hit me and in hindsight I think It was because it perfectly described my relationship with David.

The dialogue went something like this.

" You knew him for a long time."

" I guess you could say that, but it would probably be more precise to say that I knew him a long time ago."

 In the final analysis I knew him only for a portion of his life, maybe half. The rest of it I experienced from a distance. But that half that I knew was essential to my own growth and happiness.

David Miller and I fought like brothers at times and then reconciled in like manner. I'd like to think in the wake of his death that he ultimately cared about me the same way I cared about him.

It was solid but unspoken and unchanged by years.