Memorial Day is an odd day for me, of honoring those heroes that died for our country and David, who was dishonorably discharged from our country's service. He told me all about it many times, and if he were to tell me about it again it would all be familiar, but I can't bring up any details of it. I don't know if I'm getting two incidents mixed up or not. He was in jail for drugs, but I don't remember if that was the same time he was in military prison or if he was arrested twice. I never knew him as anything but an honorable gun-owning citizen that refused to wear a seatbelt, who shared my world outlook and political views, and who also never grew up since the hippie days. He was the eternal stoner of the earth to my flower child. Neither of us ever went on to the harder stuff beyond weed or our imagination, except some experimentation in the 60s. Looking back, we both could have been killed, but having lived through it we both wouldn't have traded our stints with LSD, 'shrooms, psyllicybin, speed, and a couple I forgot, for anything. They truly were mind expanding. Well, the speed wasn't. Speed was something totally different. That was just a day that I accomplished a lot.
Accomplishing something would be memorable. I was never a striver for things or a big dreamer. David and I were both the laziest people we knew. We both lacked any kind of ambition. We tried to set goals and purposes for our lives, but could never think of any. My only wish was to be happy, and happiness usually eluded me. David never desired to be happy, because he didn't know what it was. I tried for decades to get him to understand what happiness was and to desire it. We would have arguments about it. In the end, he taught me what it was. He had to, in order to get me out of a mental abyss into which I had fallen. And when I finally crawled out of that abyss he finally told me, "I know what happiness is." We rejoiced and celebrated. And at some point a few days or months later he told me that he not only knew what it was, but that he was happy. More rejoicing and celebrating. From then on we were both deliriously happy and became teachers of happiness. I'm not sure how we did that, people were just inspired by us somehow. So when he died and I collapsed, others thought I was strong. But inside me it feels impossibly hard to be a happiness teacher by myself, and it often feels like I'm only half of me and half happy.
David also thought I was the most oblivious person he ever met. He noticed everything. His survival depended on it. His mother died a year after he was born, and his father abandoned him with an abusive grandmother that tried to poison him. He taught himself manners. He was the life of the party type. Very quick and sharp wit, and the discretion to go along with it that never got him in trouble for it. You could take him anywhere. His background never showed. He had learned to keep his feelings hidden even from himself.
David was bi, and some of our gay friends assumed David was gay and our marriage was just an "arrangement." Sorry, boys, he chose me for most of his life, so eat your hearts out. David and I were incapable of anything but honesty. I don't know what it is like to be with a lying cheater, thank god. I think Wil, my first husband, may have cheated on me, but it's just a mere suspicion, I really will never know. With David I knew, I knew him down to his core, everything. There were two times in his life he was clearly hiding something from me. Neither were that embarrassing or freaky, but it took him 8-12 hours to finally come clean. The first time he bought a car, and the second time was many years later, in a different car (affectionately called "the Toad"), when he got stuck on the road in heavy traffic and just had to pee, but it worked out very well because he discovered he could direct his pee right into the shelf of the door and it would leak right out. Both stories were way longer than this, and we had a good laugh when he finally told me. We shared everything, but it wasn't always blissful. Honesty can be very hard to take, but it always made us grow.
We were both reclusive hermits. We liked being home with our computers. It's how we stayed connected to the world. Me to my family and friends, and David with the latest in green, solar and organic. He drove a free car - Barb gave the Toad to him. It basically had no floor, the seats were mostly foam as the upholstery had worn off, the doors and windows didn't really open (I think David kept a wrench on the floor to open them with) and of course, it was a stick. He had anything and everything you could want related to animation and a gazillion other interests. He had a copy of everything Edna St. Vincent Millay and Stephen Meader ever wrote. I have them all on a shelf waiting to ebay someday.
When he died I looked at the forums he was on, and his mailing lists, and his accounts and stuff. I was terrified I would never be able to again if his computer crashed. He always left everything open and on all the time, and I didn't know his passwords to any of these places. I answered some of his emails and received condolences back, and one even came to his memorial. Our postal lady hugged me and cried and little kids came by asking for him. Everyone in the neighborhood knew the farmer on the corner in the middle of the city with his fish pond and chickens, that raised earthworms and composted and built a practice adobe wall in the middle of the yard. Some had spent many an hour gabbing over the fence with him. He was always home and usually puttering in the yard. (I would have been home sleeping for my night shift).
Once David and I began having an email conversation in our separate offices (mine guestroom presentable, and his a hoarder's nightmare) and I said, no, we're not going to become a nerd couple, meet me in the living room. We liked reading to each other and watching TV together. I liked when he barbecued (remember, he's from Texas - barbecuing genius is in his dna) whatever I prepared in the kitchen, no matter how badly I messed it up or how thinly I cut it or what ingredient we ran out of, if he barbecued it, it would be awesome. I used to make a killer chili, the secret ingredient of which was David's leftover barbecued burgers.
Barb (the only other person in the world that watched David die with me) called. She always calls this time of year without mentioning that's why she's calling.
Most of the year I'm happy, but right now it feels like June will never come.
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