I received a beautiful note from a friend of Dave’s and mine, who had come across this writing space and wanted to reach out to let me know a few things. He had always thought of Dave as someone “better”. By better he didn’t mean that Dave had a self-inflated sense of himself (although he could have been considered cocky by many! LOL) he meant that Dave had something about him that attracted other people, engaged other people and allowed people to feel special.
I am wary of romanticizing Dave. I know it’s easy to build the dead into legendary figures posthumously. He was in reality, like many guys, and in many ways we had a very typical relationship and life together. We were not exempt from fighting, being grumpy or falling into other typical couple and family problems. He was messy, he wasn’t the best emotional communicator but he always lived “REAL”. Annoyingly, he always seemed to just get it. I’m talking about anything. Like any problem that you or I might encounter whether it be emotional or a simple everyday issue, he could cut through all the layers of stuff that the rest of us needed to wade through for years in therapy or just by making mistakes, and just see the answer. This was not easy to deal with in arguments. He was essentially always right, in a logical, practical sense. One of his best friends had told me the story that they had all gone together to a psychic years before, and the psychic had told him that he had a white aura. As it was told to me and in a few online resources I found, a white aura symbolizes someone who is highly evolved, perhaps living their last human life – if you subscribe to that idea, and someone who doesn’t need to do a lot of seeking to know what is right. This is exactly how Dave was and boy was it frustrating for this mere mortal with all of her flaws.
A little while ago, I read (I mean listened to the audio book as I now tend to do because I spend a lot of time in the car) Busy Philipps‘ memoir,”This will Only Hurt a Little“. In it, Busy talks about her theory on Sparkly Humans, as is referenced here in this NY Times article about her book – “Philipps, 39, is a case study for her own “sparkly human” theory — something she invented a few years ago. It refers to someone who isn’t necessarily the most famous, but radiates self-confidence in a way that the world opens up to them.” This is a perfect description for Dave, although he might have resisted being called “Sparkly”. He exuded confidence, warmth, positive energy, charm, humour, in a way that was not fake or contrived, it was just real. People gravitated to him. They wanted to help him, or give him things. I don’t want to put the idea out there that sparkly Dave worked less. He had an amazing work ethic. Until he was diagnosed with brain cancer, I don’t think he took more than a couple of sick days in the whole 19 years that I knew him. He liked to say he had a horse-shoe up his butt, meaning he was lucky, but I think it had to do with this law of attraction, sparkly-human part of him. That trait is so hard to describe in people, but he had it, and he put it out into the world with every interaction. I think that is why I get so many people telling me how special he was. Now you know, he was sparkly. And we were lucky to have known him, weren’t we? If you have a sparkly story about him – please share it with me.
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