Remembering David Wick
Through the darkness on the pathways of life
Each invisible prayer is like a cloud in the air
Tomorrow keeps turning around
We live and we die, we know not why
But I'll be with you when the deal goes down
~Bob Dylan
After a long battle with lung disease, David passed away on March 11th, 2010.
David Wick was my stepfather.
That can say a lot actually. Stepfather's and stepsons are the stuff of mythology at times.
It is impossible for me to reflect on our relationship without remembering that in it's early days, it was complicated and difficult at times. I was in my teens, and David, well, he would be the first one to tell you that he had a problem with drinking at the time. So we had our problems getting along.
However, David dealt with his problem, and I, somehow,(despite what seemed my best intentions) survived my teen years. With maturity, hopefully, comes reflection and David and I were able to discover that we were really more alike than not. David had a background in the arts, and was actually trained as a graphic artist during his time in the army. He also did quite a bit of photography, and when I showed an interest in the same, David didn't hesitate to get me a rather good camera. I still have it. I had a good eye for photography, but never was able to expand my interest. In recent years, with the digital revolution (something David stringently resisted), I have discovered that perhaps more than any other art form, photography resonates the most for me. Seeing the world, seeing light and color and form and wanting to share that with others, capture it, well...that is a pretty nice gift, and David gave it to me.
This is a picture of a rather young me, that David took with my camera. Me as a twenty year old, new father, holding my baby boy, 18 years ago. This is what David saw. Interesting now, to look at that kid...me, not the baby Jared. I think I understand what it was he could see, and I am glad I grew out of it.
David became the only grandfather my children would know on my side. When Jared was born, my father and I were estranged. We wouldn't begin communicating again until I was into my later 20's and by then, he was dying of cancer. So my father never even met his grandchildren. Dave, however, was a very good "Opa" to my kids. There was always sleepovers at Oma and Opa's house, and he worked on bikes and built things for them. David was very good to the kids. He wasn't a cuddly grandpa. He was gruff and tough sometimes. However, he was always there for them.
This is David and Jared, the summer of 2003. Jared had come back up to Maryland with us from our guest appearance at Scarborough Faire Renaissance Festival, in Texas. Dave and my mother had driven to pick him up and take him back to Texas, via a side trip through Pennsylvania, where David was born and spent much of his childhood. It's a great picture of a boy and his grandpa and I understand that they had many adventures on the way home. I am very glad Jared has that memory of him.
This is one of my favorite pictures of David and my mother, holding my second baby, Ellawyn, at Christmas in Texas, 2004. She was only four months old.
That same little girl grew up quite a bit and in 2008 she received a new bike from Oma and Opa.
I hope Ellawyn remembers her Opa. I know we shall tell her about him. She is of the age when memories can be fleeting at times. It is one of our great joys that we got to visit this year at Christmas time when it looked rather dire that we wouldn't. Ellawyn was able to spend nights with her Oma and Opa and even though Dave was immobile and on oxygen, he greatly enjoyed his "Bouncing Pogo Stick" of a granddaughter.
David and I both would rather find our solace in outdoor spaces and books. We both had a keen understanding for the earth and growing things. I will always remember David pulling a handful of finished compost from his bin and inhaling the aroma. I was still a teen then, however, looking back on it, I think I mostly understood that at the time, and I utterly understand it now. The pride I take in my composting is inconceivable to anyone who isn't an avid gardener. Good compost is like life, and by far one of those important and foundational skills to civilization. I know that David understood that as well.
We both found a curious affection for wearing bib overalls. It is one of my only regrets that I never got a good picture of me and David in our bibs. This is the best one I have, of our backs even. Oddly enough, that is a good picture. I went through a mental transition over the past few years with Dave. We had such troubles in my teens, that I found I was still carrying resentments. As I matured into my thirties, I came to understand David as a father figure to me. I am glad I told him that finally. This pic, I am riding on the back lifts of the tractor, something I have deep memories of doing with my grandfather.
Here is a picture from earlier in that day. Ellawyn riding in the trailer, with a group of cousins, and family, going for a little hay ride, while David drove.
We even both shared the name David. My first name is David. It's a common name, but one of rich heritage and history. Simple but deep. Yeah, he was like that.
Of course, there was another man that I shared many of these traits with. That other fellow was my grandfather, Andre Gerault. Perhaps in that, is where the core of our similarity lies. You see, David was my stepfather, however, he was also Andre's son-in-law. I am who am because of my mother and my grandfather's influence, and my mother chose David. So perhaps, it wasn't just that David and I were alike, but that we were both a bit like my grandfather. I would like to think so.
David was, hands down, the best read person I knew. Any visit with David was a experience of books, as he pulled multiple ones from the shelves to illustrate a point and make it clear that I REALLY needed to read this one. I would invariably end up with a tottering pile of tomes on the table in front of me. I hope someday to read even a small portion of the ones he suggested and gave to me. I have kept every one.
Because David was such a reader, you would think that books would be good gifts. However, as is so often the case, it was harder than that. David was rather self-sufficient and didn't need much. When I found a good book for him at at Christmas, I considered it a real score. One year, I gave David a copy of A Reverence For Wood, by Eric Sloane. The author is truly an American treasure. To quote a retrospective of his work,
"Eric Sloane was one of the most interesting artistic figures of the 20th century, even though in many ways his work harkened back to an earlier era. He was like the Howard Pyle of his generation, displaying a multitude of literary and artistic talents which came together in brilliant and unique works which stand alone as embodiments of the art and craft of design. Sloane was a remarkable landscape painter - one of his murals graces the walls of the Smithsonian Air and Space museum - but he is best known for his books on various aspects of history, craft and American tradition - books featuring not only his evocative illustrations, but his unique hand-lettered titles and insightful distillations of history and practical philosophy from the perspective of a craftsman."
I think you can gather why I felt David would like his work, and the fact that he wasn't familiar with it already, was remarkable. David was much like Sloane. A bit of a living anachronism. Everyone who really knew David, knew that he would have been perfectly at home in a small Pennsylvania village in the early nineteenth century. This is myself, Dave, and my mother, and David is holding the book. However, we like to wrap gifts in the excess travel maps we acquire on our trips, and I had wrapped Davids, naturally, in a Pennsylvania map. He was enjoying tracing the routes quite a bit.
Although, when it came to craftsmanship, slow and cautious doesn't accurately describe David. He was famously tedious in his construction and my mother and his home is filled with half finished projects and such. I think it was a product of the Pennsylvania character. A tiny cottage of a place, with an interior footage of less than 600 sq. feet. The yard isn't much bigger than that, however David and she truly made the best of it. David was very skilled at crafting vignettes in a small space. Early on, he used concrete to create a spiraling shell surrounding a telephone pole. It seemed that each area was done with such thought, and an over abundance of precision, that it was hard to understand the space. There home is on a tour of our home town, Lewisville, TX, and rightly so.
One of the features of the yard is a green house, constructed of old windows. Inspired, Leah and I have been saving windows for our own. I had grand plans for David. I had hoped that he would recover, and they would be able to visit this summer. I wanted to have him help me draw up plans to build ours. When Jared was small, he insisted that if it was green house, that is should be painted green..so it was.
Even their picket fence was a family story. David spent months planing it, carefully drawing out designs for the length of the pickets to be in proportion to one another. Then each picket was cut, sanded, drilled, etc. At one point during the installation, David cut his hand rather badly requiring an expensive emergency room visit. So it became known as the "thousand dollar fence", much to his chagrin. My mom has said that in his passing, the house isn't so bad, but in the yard, she had felt his absences the most. This is a picture of my mom, the fence, and the yard, taken this Christmas season.
In my youth, there was always a sense of desperation to David's reading suggestions. As if, my very success in life depended upon the ideas in them. It always seemed as if he was a bit irritated at my very youthfulness. I believe the quote "Youth is Wasted on the Young" would be an accurate assessment. I didn't tend to take it seriously then.
I do now.
You see, I recently realized that David was only 18 years my senior. At 38, I am older now than he was when I first met him. I can, with the hindsight of experience, now understand that he was indeed desperate to impart something to me. He was attempting to get across the void of youth, that if I could only snap out of it, and find my true potential, that I would be able to live life and not let it run over me. I know that a bit of that anger and desperation to get through to me was rooted in his own reflection of dreams and goals left unfilled.
I am listening now. I hope he knew that. Here, in the clarity of being the father of a teenage son, I can see what you were trying to say. I'm sure it was difficult. He had never had a teen son, and I had never had a stepfather.
That same hindsight, shows us, as is so often the case when we lose someone, how much we were influenced by them. It is only by the their absence can we really sense the spaces they occupied in our hearts. However, those voids are only empty for a few brief days. Soon we fill them up with the inspirations and memories, allowing us to draw on their wisdom in entirely new ways.
Perhaps the one most important gift that I get from David, is that a keen intellect, and a strong back are not mutually exclusive. That hard work, coupled with a good mind, can help a fellow find a real sense of accomplishment in life and perhaps be of service to others. It may not be a life of greatness, but it can be a great life. That the sun on your face and a shovel in your hand can be just as important as anything else. Of course, I received that same example from my grandfather as well. I think that is very fitting.
One thing that David and my son Jared shared was a common birthday of March 20th. This is usually the Vernal Equinox, the first day of Spring, and one of the most important days of reverence for human culture. Over the years the date has come to mean more and more to me. Several of my favorite people, both in and out of my family share this birthday. A good day to be born. Sadly, Dave passed just eight days short of his 57th birthday. It was both sad and joyful this year, but then it is often so in the Spring. To welcome the sun after a long cold winter, greet the flowers, look forward to what shall be, and reflect on what was. Gardens, are as much about death as they are about life.
The day David died, it may be odd to say, but I had a beautiful day.
I spent it alone in my garden. I knew that my mother was in a Texas hospital surrounded by family, waiting on the inevitable. I needed to trench and dig drainage for the rains that were due to melt the extensive snow pack we have received over the hard winter of '09-'10. So I spent the day with shovel and pick in hand, the sun drying the tears on my face, and dirt in my teeth. It was the kind of day that I know David would have loved. There is a Native American saying. "Today is a Good Day to Die". It means that you should live each day in that way. I think that it was a good day for David to go as well. I have joked about the David Wick Memorial Drainage Ditch. It's only half a joke. A fitting memorial to a man who knew the value of a good ditch dug from Appalachian soil.
Our home is only a couple of hours drive or so from where David was born and raised. The land is similar to it. It is true that people often reflect the landscape of their upbringing. If I am tempered from Texas sage brush, bright summers and scrub oaks, carrying the spirit of the independence of west, then David was equally of the land of Pennsylvania. Rich, loamy soil, fertile with thought, while down deep, ancient bed rock and sandstone lies waiting for discovery.
Here is one final picture of my folks. Taken in the summer of 2004 while I was in town to pick up Jared for the summer. Bright Texas sun, bib overalls, scruffy beard.
As always, when a heart is breaking, words really do fail.
Thank you David, for being a father and a friend.