In 1996 in this week, we flew to New York with our friend Barbara to see Jose Carreras in concert at Carnegie Hall. She was a huge fan and a whole group of older women (and Walt) were in a group that sat in the first two rows of Carnegie Hall to watch the concert and to go backstage afterwards to get his autograph.
The next day, we took a t our of parts of New York with a CompuServe friend and ended up back at the home of my good friend, Ron, who was hosting a party so I could meet several people I had interacted with on CompuServe, but had not met.
As we sat waiting for the first guests to arrive, the phone rang and Ron went to the back of the apartment to answer it. it was Ned, calling from San Francisco General Hospital, where David had been taken after an auto accident that would end up being fatal.
Ron called the airline and changed our tickets so we could fly home first thing in the morning and we went back to our hotel, where I talked on the phone to a woman letting her know that we were donating David's organs.
It was such a strange feeling being 3000 miles away while our baby was dying.
Lawsuit had gone to Los Angeles to play a show and were in Disneyland and I don't know who thought to call Disneyland and let them know. Somehow they managed to find everyone. Ned, Jeri, Paul and Tom were able to get to the hospital, along with my mother and David's friend. They were harvesting his organs by the time we got to San Francisco so we never saw him.
His memorial service was held in the Veterans Memorial Theater, which was standing room only. The kids put on a show, including a song that Tom wrote which he sang with David's friend.
27 years later it hardly seems real. I can't imagine David being 53 years old. He is permanently stuck at 24. Ironically, he loved James Dean and we discovered that Dean's auto accident was when he was 24.
David's favorite food was Kraft dinner, which we served at his memorial (I think only family ate any of it). We have Kraft dinner on his anniversary every year and we had Kraft dinner tonight. We will have it next year too. Walt's sister texted to say they were having Kraft dinner too (but with Vienna sausages added).
Jeri called. She always calls on this day and it always reminds me that I called my mother every year on the anniversary of my sister's death.
The sad days are now over until the holidays. We've commemorated both Paul's and David's birthdays and the anniversary of each of their deaths and now until Christmas, we won't spend time being sad that they are missing. At least not any more than we do every other day.
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