It was a comfort to have all of our children gather to be with us. We were only missing Marshall and Canyon, who stayed home as they felt Canyon was too young and sensitive to experience the emotions of the time. Standing from left to right is Alissa, Ryan, Andrea, Jana and Auggie, Denise, and Ken. Kneeling is Tyler, Lyndsay and Mackenzie.
This week has been lived in a true “Steel Magnolias” style. Laughter through tears. We have all been so touched by the outpouring of love and generosity from family, friends and some who don’t even know us at all. Yesterday we had a full day of honoring and cherishing David’s unique style and perspective of the world. We started with a service where all the siblings shared our thoughts and experiences… recounted the many ways we were formed and changed by his presence in our lives. The church in his neighborhood then provided us with a lovely luncheon. Family and close friends met in Canyon Glen and his children, Kyle and Diane, spread his ashes on the Provo Canyon Trail where he spent countless hours running and training for the many marathons he ran. There was a releasing of the white doves symbolizing eternal peace and the spiritual flight home. The flight of the beautiful white doves lift your eyes to the heavens and create a tranquil moment of silence…. except for the gentle sound of wings against the wind. We ended the day with dinner at the Founders Grill at Sundance. It was a perfect ending to a perfect day surrounded by the serenity of the mountain air and gentle breezes. David loved well and was loved well in return.
I am posting, in their entirety, the 3 pages of thoughts I expressed at his memorial service. I will also be posting pictures to my Snapfish account so anyone who wants to can order prints.
Hello everyone…. My name is Denise, known as NeeNee by my brother David. I am his big sister just 14 months older. We didn’t share a lot of our adult lives together, as I moved out of state when I married, but we had a rich and adventuresome childhood experienced side by side. You might say we had a charmed childhood and lived under an umbrella of shared innocence. What happy, happy times it was then….
Water seemed to be a big theme for us. We were fascinated by any creek or body of water and wanted to see what was in there. I think of walks to the bottom of 8th south, were we lived, to swing on a rope into the small river that was there. How we filled up our buckets with polliwogs and brought them home to a plastic pool in the backyard. There was a park in Provo where Geneva Steel had their company picnics. A creek ran the length of it and we loved to watch the skeeter bugs and again look for polliwogs. Every summer we had a pass to the Scera Pool where we took swimming lessons and went swimming nearly every day. And in the winter when the water froze we ice skated on Utah Lake. It seemed the sun was always shining in our world then.
We lived in the days when Orem was still full of cherry and apple orchards. I remember playing Cowboys and Indians among the trees. I know mom must of kept a close eye on us when we wandered off but it felt then as if we tramped the world at large, exploring anything we saw of interest. We gathered asparagus from the orchard borders and sold them to the neighbors for a nickel a bunch. We picked cherries for 3 cents a lb. every summer from the time we were eight until our jr. high school years.
A lot of our fun took place in trips to the grandparents. At Grandma Porter’s house we were best buddies. I still see us racing in the house together to get in the game and art cupboard. We played endless card games of war and chinese checkers. We were always anxious to explore the basement we’d explored dozens of times before but even finding the same old things, together, made it feel like a new adventure. We went out on the red desert bluffs and caught lizards in glass jars. With our cousins we caught grasshoppers and made box houses for them in the backyard.
We had just as much fun and excitement at Grandma Erickson’s house and with our cousins there. We got to do animal sticker books with glue grandma made from flour and water. We made chocolate chip cookies and Wyler’s lemonade and hid in her raspberry bushes. We loved to explore her basement as well, and played with her old hand wringer washing machine. We loved Aunt Pat and being in the whirlwind of activity at her house and riding the ponies and having water races at Aunt Yvonnes.
As we grew older and took on more responsibilities I found out how fortunate I was to always be paired up with David because we were the closest in age. We mainly had responsibility for the kitchen and I was only allowed to wash the dishes so he could do the rinsing and make sure my job was done properly. He then shooed me away and said he would take care of the rest, which meant a thorough cleaning of the countertops and cupboards and even polishing the units on the stove.
We lost a lot of our closeness during the high school years when I was adamantly forbidden to talk with or even acknowledge his friends. I thought this was a total rip off of one of the best benefits I had of being his sister. He had a lot of cute friends.
We also lived under an umbrella of the unconditional love of our mother. Then and throughout our lives it is one thing we never had to question. We all knew we were loved by mom. She taught us to have respect for the differences among all the people of the world and that is a quality all the siblings share. She also had the innate ability of instilling values in us and then setting us free in the world to have our own thoughts and chart our own course. And so mom, David knew…. . knew how very much you loved and cherished him.
David and I talked this year about how the years had taken us more into our own lives and we shared several emails about our thoughts on growing up and our place in the family. Here is what David had to say and I quote. “I remember stabbing you with a pencil in the top of your head one day. The lead stuck in. I think that was the last time we fought. I have nothing but pleasant memories of dad in our childhood. He taught me many things and was a good friend. I could talk to him about anything. I felt very loved and secure by him. I think Susan feels the same way. I loved him dearly and cry a lot realizing all the good things he instilled in my soul.
I did try to become close to you after you married Randy. Try to remember all the times I would come to visit you. I was in love with Scooter and Sissy and could not get enough of them. I wanted children just like them for my own. Then you married Ken and moved away and that was that. And David did get himself some of those children…. Two absolutely wonderful and talented children, Kyle and Diane, who were both instilled with his intelligence and he loved you both with all of his heart and more.
David continued by saying. When I was 17 or 18 I quit teasing Evan and use to beat the bleep out of Paul if he came near him. This was about the same time I stabbed you with that pencil. I had an awakening. Evan may be the most stable of all of us and is very well read with a keen memory. I was the motivator or influence that caused Evan to lose 100 pounds and run a marathon. I also put him through Electronics school and he would have never done either one of them without my support. This is the way I see some of these things. I may be wrong but in my mind that’s what I see. I don't see Susan much but when I see her it is pleasant. I love her children.
I would be remiss not to mention the thread of depression and bipolar illness that runs through our family. Many of us have felt its sting…. have battled the days of despair, lack of energy, and joy of life it steals from you. It has been my quest to bring it to the light of day in our family, as it will surely affect many of us in all the generations to come. I have wanted to create an atmosphere where it can be acknowledged and talked about. And there should be no shame…. no shame at all in having an illness of the brain with a genetic component that can be passed along like a hoard of any other illnesses. I like to compare it to a cancerous tumor that goes in and out of remission. David came over last February and told me he didn’t think Dad and I were the only ones in the family with that diagnosis. He felt he was also suffering with some of its symptoms. I think his assessment was correct. At the time he was feeling the glowing part of it where you have never felt so wonderful and you are on top of the world…. he talked about his incessant need to keep talking, the feelings of self importance and his excessive exercising. I made a mental note to keep an eye on him because I knew what could happen when the glow begins to fade.
This past year David had fought and successfully conquered one of his biggest battles with life…. his addiction to alcohol and lost nearly 100 lbs. while doing so. He did it with the 100% conviction and determination that David had whenever he did anything that he did. He also told me how hard it was being single again in his fifties. He was happy for Kathy that she had found love again and soon thereafter he made a special trip to my house to tell me he had found it again as well, with his high school girlfriend, Debbie. He glowed when he talked about her and described her as one classy lady. He really came to life this year and it was a great privilege to be invited into his inner world. Still, David was a private, fiercely independent, competent and intelligent person. And when you reach a certain level of despair, it doesn’t matter how many people love you, how enriched your life might actually be…. instead it becomes an illness of endurance…. riding the waves until the good days surface again, which they always do. It is my firm belief his final act was not a selfish one, but was instead, in his mind, however misguided, his final show of the greatest love he had for his family as he was trying to shield them from any of his pain and being any kind of burden to them. And I’m so sorry David, so sorry that you felt you had to walk that road alone. And yes, I think his assessment was correct…. he was battling a formidable foe. Let us make a vow to burden each other if we ever need to do so.
At a time in my life when I felt devoid of hope I read this quote. “Hope is... not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something has meaning and makes sense, regardless of how it turns out” David your life made sense and had meaning. It meant something to everyone who loved you and the countless friends that crossed your path. It meant something to me. I loved you and you will be missed. You are my brother. Godspeed, David, Godspeed.
Ryan called me for this recipe last week and Tyler requests it every time he visits. It's an easy one (the kind I like best) and nutritious too, and you guessed it.... it freezes well. I always like to make more of things and then have a backup in the freezer for when I am too busy (ya, right) or I don't feel like cooking (more like it)...
