It's my blog and I'll cry if I want to

Dave & Charly's boat ---->

Today is a day of dreary misty drizzle, it can't even summon enough energy for a good rainstorm, and suits my mood perfectly. We've just come from the memorial service for Dave. It was packed - standing room only and I'm sure we broke the fire codes. Friends from his engineering business, his music, his sailing. When I know someone from one area of life, and think of him/her in one context, it's always amazing to see the other facets of a complex person.

We first met Dave and his wife Charly in Trinidad and it was everything the cruising dream *wasn't.* The boats were "on the hard" (on dry land, being worked on) in the boat yard and it was dusty and hot. Many boat systems, like the refrigerator, a/c, and *bathroom* don't work when out of the water, so living aboard was definitely camping out. They seemed pleasant enough, we smiled at our circumstances - the sacrifices we make to see the world on our own terms - and treated the inconveniences more like the minor annoyances they were than major drama. But I thought little of it, likely we'd never see them again.

Wrong. Less than a year later, in Maine, there was a graceful schooner on the horizon ... when they reached the anchorage, this time the meeting was the "travel brochure of cruising." Sitting in their cockpit in the late afternoon sun, 3 couples sharing wine and stories and then Dave took out the guitar that he'd built himself(!), singing in a rich baritone and playing old sea chanties. The one that stuck in my mind, Bay Of Fundy talked about the fog and a sailor who didn't want the "cold (or long?) green wave to be his watery grave." Ah, this really is the life!

Dave and Charly, and Dan and I, were married within a few months of each other. Dave was the same age as Dan when he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. They both went to the same hospital and had the same radiation tech, a delightful woman named (how appropriately!) Faith. But Dan is fine and Dave ...

I've had too much death in my life recently.

So often, the people that shape our lives cross our paths only briefly, and after the chance is lost, we say, "I wish I'd had the chance to know him better. I wish I'd learned more from him."

Dave introduces one of his songs, Turning Toward The Morning, and say it "gives us hope that maybe, eventually, the morning (Spring) will come again." Tomorrow maybe I'll wear sunshine colors, yellow or orange. Do you think it'll help?