"Keeping it real"
To Dave, that meant keeping things honest and in perspective. In all my life, I never met anyone who never told even a teeny white lie, even to protect some one's feelings. Except for Dave. If I put on something that made my butt look big(ger) he would say, "Damn, Honey, those jeans make your butt look big." But somehow when he said it, there was so much love and affection that came with it, it was okay for him to say it. I knew he meant it with absolutely no malice or derision, no judgement. It was simply his observation and I could do with the information whatever I chose to do with it. He was a firm believer in having choices.
Dave felt very strongly that people should not hide behind half-truths or anything else. He felt that everything should be right up front, just like it was with him. What you saw was always the "real" Dave. He had very little tolerance for those who chose to evade and mask the truth, especially when it was about themselves. He simply didn't understand why people wanted to pretend to be something they were not and he chose to not surround himself with people who fell into that category. He was someone who gave everything he had to a friendship and so he could count those he considered his friends on one hand because he expected them to return the respect. He was as loyal a friend as anyone could ever hope to have, although even his friends sometimes, I think, didn't totally understand him.
He didn't think much of women who wore make up and had their hair done or who spent a lot of money on clothes, etc. He said that was just a way of hiding their true selves and how could you trust someone like that. On the other hand, he was one of the most feministic men I have ever known, totally in touch with his own "feminine" side and the first to acknowledge that he even had one. He said it made him a better man, husband, lover, etc. because he tried very hard to understand things from a female's perspective. Although that may sound a little ambiguous, in the context of talking about Dave, it isn't.
"Keeping it real..." became almost a mantra for him and for me. It set the tone for much of our life together and it certainly affected everything we did, together or apart. What there was (is?) between the two of us was a real as it gets.
"It is what it is."
Those five simple words came to mean something more to Dave and I than they might mean to most people. When he originally was diagnosed with renal cancer, he simply said that there was no reason to get too upset about it because "it is what it is".
Many people who receive a cancer diagnosis start to look at it (the cancer) as a living, breathing enemy to be battled and, ever the pacifist, Dave had no intention of his life becoming a battlefield. He would do what he could to make his life the best he could for whatever time remained, but he told me early on that he would not seek any treatment that would affect his life in a negative way. I told him it was his body and his life and that I would not push him to do anything he didn't want to do. I could not be so selfish as to want something for him that he did not want for himself. He had always given me everything he had to give and I could not ask him for any more.
No one wants to die and Dave was no exception, but he did not fear his death. He was convinced that there was something wonderful to come after this life, and while he was not entirely sure what it might be, he believed in it and thought of it as the "next great adventure".
When I met Dave, he had been reading a book by Dan Millman titled "The Way of the Peaceful Warrior". While he understood that the book was part fiction and part a telling of the author's own journey, it resonated deeply within him and was the catalyst that set him on a path toward spiritual enlightenment and understanding. He spent the next 16 years of his life on that path.
When I was packing up to move after he died, I came across that book. And although I knew it would start the flood, I opened it. In those pages were highlighted passages and notes he had made in the margins and I remembered back to the first time he explained to me why he was reading the book and what it was about. It is now of my most treasured possessions because it speaks to me of the man he was and how he was always striving to become a better one.
"It is what it is." I can still hear him saying that. If we had focused on the cancer instead of living our lives together as we had always lived we would have missed out on so much love and happiness together. The last 5 years of Dave's life with me had more meaning than it would have had if we had focused only on his disease. During that 5 years, our feelings for each other were as intense as they had been the first year we were together (and trust me when I say, those years were intense). We spent all that time just on the business of loving and supporting each other. Those are the memories that will carry me until the end of my days and I will be forever grateful to have been married to a man who knew what I needed to survive without him and who was brave enough to give it to me.
Can you see it in his eyes?
