David Wayne King - 8.29.71 - 1.12.06
Five years ago, I lost my husband. I met Dave when I was 16, and I loved him from the moment I saw him. He will always remain in my mind as one of the hottest men I've ever met, and the fact he dug me in the slightest is still an ego boost, nearly 16 years later. By the time I was 18, it was all over, and he was mine. (It had nothing to do with being legal, either! In NH the age of consent is 16, haha.) For over eight years we had ups and downs, and many of you know just how down some of those downs were, but the good times were always so indescribably fantastic that they were worth sticking around for.
The summer I turned 25, right before his 33rd birthday, he was diagnosed with Marfan's. It's a rare connective tissue disease - it's genetic, and affects roughly 1 in 10,000 people. Many don't know they have it. Luckily, people know more about this disease now than ever before. Dave's amazing cardiothoracic surgeon, Dr. Anthony Discipio, of Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, was fascinated by Marfan's, and couldn't wait to take on Dave's case. Last year, he emailed me, and told me how sorry he had been to hear the news we had lost Dave. I googled the kind doctor, and have seen that he too does his part to educate the world about Marfan's, its symptoms, and its quirks, and its indicators. I try my hardest to educate others every chance I get. I'm one little voice, but if you've met me, you know I know how to work it. :)
I'll never forget the words, "I don't know how to tell you this, but they found Dave this morning." Dave had only made it 17 months from his diagnosis and marathon open heart surgery. I was 26 years old. And I lost the best friend I'd ever had.
I still resent that I can't call him and ask him questions, and I am terrified that if I forget something about him, it's gone forever, as we were the only two people in the world who shared that particular memory. I hate that his daughter turned 18 this weekend, and he wasn't there. I hate that he hasn't visited me in Portland and met my dogs. We wouldn't be together today as husband and wife - that's another story entirely - but you don't spend your whole adult life with someone and then walk away forever. He was the first man I loved, the first man who broke my heart, and I will love him and miss him the rest of my life. It's just inconceivable that he's really gone. I still have fantasies sometimes that he's going to ring my doorbell, that it's all been some extreme lie and cover up, that somehow he's still out there and I just can't comprehend why he's not talking to any of us.
I also still see him sometimes. Out of the corner of my eye, a glimpse in a mirror, and whatever your feelings about "ghosts" - who knows - maybe they're just super intense memories of the way a person smelled, felt, sounded, the energy they held in a room - I've known on more than one occasion that he's been with me, even if it is just a lonely projection of how it felt to be with him. I keep some of his ashes in his flask. I am terrified of the day I give his trademark leather jacket to his daughter (later I will - I am afraid of some loser college boyfriend absconding with it) and the hole it will leave in my closet. I am terrified of the day his sweatshirt that I have in a bag doesn't smell like him and his cologne anymore. I had a panic attack and a big, big cry this past year when I took his ashes to a funeral home to have a locket made, and they "cleaned" the flask for me. It had his fingerprints on it. I didn't even think to tell them to leave it alone. I screamed at my father once, for grabbing a 98% empty bottle of Southern Comfort from my refrigerator, because it was the bottle we shared on our last Christmas eve; I now know better than to keep it where others can get it. I miss our inside jokes. I miss making fun of each other. I miss our weekends - driving in the car for hours, sharing a bag of french onion Sun Chips and diet Pepsi from a soda fountain. I miss working on his motorcycles together, or the old '66 Ford pick up. I miss making fun of people together. And going to concerts together. I miss turning each other on to new music, and sometimes in the car a song will make me cry, not because it's one he loved, but because it's one that has come out since he died, and I think how much he would have loved it.
What you can't quite see here is that I am 5'2"ish, I was maybe 95 pounds when this photo was taken, and Dave was 6'7" and maybe 225 pounds. The sweater I am wearing was one of his, that he shrunk. He sucked SO BAD at laundry, well before I moved in with him, that I finally took laundry over as one of my chores (after he ruined a very dear to me sweater - a beautiful old Jantzen a friend's mother had given me - by the time he was done with it, it wouldn't have fit my cat). So that sweater had been his once, and it fit me when he was finished washing it. If I didn't stretch the arms and the body, it would have been too short, even for me. We were in the kitchen of our first apartment together, with certifiably the world's worst wall paper. The hideous balloon curtain in the bedroom behind us came with the joint, too. Someone had a wallpaper fetish, and it wasn't us. But we loved that house, and I still picture us at that table whenever I see it sitting in my step daughter's mother's basement, where it now doubles as a craft surface. He was trying out the remote on the camera I'd gotten him, and old Fujifilm Discovery 320 35mm point and shoot. I still have that camera, actually.
I still have that Murphy's Law shirt.
What I don't have is Dave.
David Wayne King - 8.29.71 - 1.12.06
Five years ago, I lost my husband. I met Dave when I was 16, and I loved him from the moment I saw him. He will always remain in my mind as one of the hottest men I've ever met, and the fact he dug me in the slightest is still an ego boost, nearly 16 years later. By the time I was 18, it was all over, and he was mine. (It had nothing to do with being legal, either! In NH the age of consent is 16, haha.) For over eight years we had ups and downs, and many of you know just how down some of those downs were, but the good times were always so indescribably fantastic that they were worth sticking around for.
The summer I turned 25, right before his 33rd birthday, he was diagnosed with Marfan's. It's a rare connective tissue disease - it's genetic, and affects roughly 1 in 10,000 people. Many don't know they have it. Luckily, people know more about this disease now than ever before. Dave's amazing cardiothoracic surgeon, Dr. Anthony Discipio, of Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, was fascinated by Marfan's, and couldn't wait to take on Dave's case. Last year, he emailed me, and told me how sorry he had been to hear the news we had lost Dave. I googled the kind doctor, and have seen that he too does his part to educate the world about Marfan's, its symptoms, and its quirks, and its indicators. I try my hardest to educate others every chance I get. I'm one little voice, but if you've met me, you know I know how to work it. :)
I'll never forget the words, "I don't know how to tell you this, but they found Dave this morning." Dave had only made it 17 months from his diagnosis and marathon open heart surgery. I was 26 years old. And I lost the best friend I'd ever had.
I still resent that I can't call him and ask him questions, and I am terrified that if I forget something about him, it's gone forever, as we were the only two people in the world who shared that particular memory. I hate that his daughter turned 18 this weekend, and he wasn't there. I hate that he hasn't visited me in Portland and met my dogs. We wouldn't be together today as husband and wife - that's another story entirely - but you don't spend your whole adult life with someone and then walk away forever. He was the first man I loved, the first man who broke my heart, and I will love him and miss him the rest of my life. It's just inconceivable that he's really gone. I still have fantasies sometimes that he's going to ring my doorbell, that it's all been some extreme lie and cover up, that somehow he's still out there and I just can't comprehend why he's not talking to any of us.
I also still see him sometimes. Out of the corner of my eye, a glimpse in a mirror, and whatever your feelings about "ghosts" - who knows - maybe they're just super intense memories of the way a person smelled, felt, sounded, the energy they held in a room - I've known on more than one occasion that he's been with me, even if it is just a lonely projection of how it felt to be with him. I keep some of his ashes in his flask. I am terrified of the day I give his trademark leather jacket to his daughter (later I will - I am afraid of some loser college boyfriend absconding with it) and the hole it will leave in my closet. I am terrified of the day his sweatshirt that I have in a bag doesn't smell like him and his cologne anymore. I had a panic attack and a big, big cry this past year when I took his ashes to a funeral home to have a locket made, and they "cleaned" the flask for me. It had his fingerprints on it. I didn't even think to tell them to leave it alone. I screamed at my father once, for grabbing a 98% empty bottle of Southern Comfort from my refrigerator, because it was the bottle we shared on our last Christmas eve; I now know better than to keep it where others can get it. I miss our inside jokes. I miss making fun of each other. I miss our weekends - driving in the car for hours, sharing a bag of french onion Sun Chips and diet Pepsi from a soda fountain. I miss working on his motorcycles together, or the old '66 Ford pick up. I miss making fun of people together. And going to concerts together. I miss turning each other on to new music, and sometimes in the car a song will make me cry, not because it's one he loved, but because it's one that has come out since he died, and I think how much he would have loved it.
What you can't quite see here is that I am 5'2"ish, I was maybe 95 pounds when this photo was taken, and Dave was 6'7" and maybe 225 pounds. The sweater I am wearing was one of his, that he shrunk. He sucked SO BAD at laundry, well before I moved in with him, that I finally took laundry over as one of my chores (after he ruined a very dear to me sweater - a beautiful old Jantzen a friend's mother had given me - by the time he was done with it, it wouldn't have fit my cat). So that sweater had been his once, and it fit me when he was finished washing it. If I didn't stretch the arms and the body, it would have been too short, even for me. We were in the kitchen of our first apartment together, with certifiably the world's worst wall paper. The hideous balloon curtain in the bedroom behind us came with the joint, too. Someone had a wallpaper fetish, and it wasn't us. But we loved that house, and I still picture us at that table whenever I see it sitting in my step daughter's mother's basement, where it now doubles as a craft surface. He was trying out the remote on the camera I'd gotten him, and old Fujifilm Discovery 320 35mm point and shoot. I still have that camera, actually.
I still have that Murphy's Law shirt.
What I don't have is Dave.