Table of contents for Letters to David
- Dear David: Christmas Day
- Dear David: Your Memorial
- Dear David: Mister Hugh
- Dear David: Thanks for Helma
- Dear David: The Magnolia Tree
- Dear David: Month One
- Dear David: The Basement
- Dear David: When?
- Dear David: Month Two
- Dear David: Mister Hugh in the City
- Dear David: Month Three
- Dear David: Month Four
- Dear David: Month Five
- Dear David: Month Six
- Dear David: Month Seven
- Dear David: A Poem
- Dear David: Month Eight
- Dear David: Month Nine
- Dear David: Month 10
- Dear David: Month 11
- Dear David: Month 12
— from AviatorDave [now admin'ed by gail on the web]
David’s comment underneath this photo he took of a B-25 Mitchell at an airshow:
My first (non-airline) airplane ride was in this plane, in 1981. I was 14, and got hooked for life.
Dear David,
I can’t believe 11 months have passed since I sat with you for the last time in Mercy Hospice. Sometimes it feels raw and vivid like it happened last week, and sometimes it feels surreal, that the way our married life ended so soon after it began could only be a terrible dream.
I can’t cast my mind back far enough to a time when my life wasn’t full of contradictions: wanting to remember and wanting to forget, wishing to return to Vancouver and wishing to return to Scranton, wanting to be alone and wanting to be with people, wanting to feel like “myself” but not knowing who that is anymore, turning back the clock for another chance at meeting you and living the good part all over again but only if I can change how the story ends. I thought with time I could put the lows behind me, but I’ve somehow managed to plumb new depths of sadness. I know few people who I can share this with, so I keep most of it to myself. Contrary to popular belief, misery does not love company.
Sometime since I wrote you last I decided that getting my pilot’s license from an instructor other than you was an idea I could eventually live with, but this is going to take a lot of time and money. In the meantime I bought a membership to an aviation museum, one that I know you wanted to visit when we were in Toronto together last year if we’d had more time. I found a brochure for it in the house when I was packing in January, and what sold me on the membership was that it included annual flights in some of their warbirds. It took me all of two seconds to decide which one I wanted to fly in: the 1939 Douglas DC-3 Dakota.
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