Sunday, September 20, 2009

A thoughtful, loyal friend

August 24, 2009

Hi all,

Thanks for organizing this [an email list]. I did not even know David had passed away until after his funeral, but wished I was there. (I know stuff like that gets crazy when someone dies). David and I met at UVa, where I remember becoming friends when we shared a class in the history of modern art. He has been such a loyal friend, always keeping in touch, always remembering my birthday, which was just the week after he died.

When I moved from California to Boston in 1990, he and I had a great plan to drive my '76 orange Honda station wagon across the country together. He flew out, but then my car died a terrible death in the airport parking garage while picking up my dad for my med school graduation. Fortunately, David had bought a round-trip plane ticket, just in case. We got to visit, and the pictures Joe Grady shared of David at Lake Tahoe were from that trip of his. I ended up moving to Boston by plane.

Periodically, I'd go down to NY to see my sister, who lives in Westchester, and make a trip into the city and get together with David, who knew all the gluten-free restaurants where we could go (sushi and Indian were among his favorites). Often I'd have my kids in tow or others. We walked around Manhattan a lot. One year, for his birthday, I sent David an Amtrak ticket to Boston, but unfortunately, he never used it :-(.

In the months after 9/11, I was hanging around NYC with David, who really could not stop talking how those terrible events has deeply affected him. We rode the Staten Island ferry, just to relax and chat, and he told me how things were in NYC around that time. He apologized for talking about it so much, but I was glad to hear it from him; it impressed me how deeply these events affected him.

Later, when I got interested in breastfeeding advocacy, David always sent me articles about the links between not-breastfeeding and subsequent development of celiac. He was also just so thoughtful!!

Anyway, I will so totally miss him. I can't even believe he is gone. Sometimes I see things that remind me of him, and I'm still in disbelief.

Melissa Bartick

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