David's Black Crocs

  

            Yesterday I gave away David’s Crocs.

            Except for a few times when David donned Army boots to do business at Hanscom Air Force Base in Bedford, he wore his beloved black Crocs constantly, taking them off only to go to bed. I informally rated the nurses and technicians at Cox outpatient for how careful they were in not unintentionally kicking the Crocs under the exam table.

            They were made of flexible matte-black resin and had removable fleece lining for cold weather. David never made a formal will, but he had definite plans for his Crocs. He wanted to donate them to someone in a muddy area of Africa.

            A few weeks after David’s death our friend, Diane Kellogg, saw me out in the flower garden and stopped by. We gardened for a while and I asked her if she still travelled to Ghana. She does. She is a board member of Hope for Africa, an international non-governmental organization (NGO) engaged in sustainable development in Africa as well as founder of The Ghana Project at Bentley University .

            When I mentioned David’s Crocs and his wish, she immediately thought of a man in Accra, Charles, who could use them.

            Diane will fly to Accra on September 29^th and present them to Charles on October 4^th:

David’s birthday. It’s a Sunday; he was born on a Sunday in 1987. twenty-eight years ago. I remember the weekend well. That Saturday evening I bought a used wooden baby dresser and a sister missionary in Manchester helped me pick it up at a second story apartment and move it into our house while our husbands were at the chapel watching the priesthood session of the LDS General Conference. Next day he was born, six minutes before the last session of General Conference. I joked about having time to get to the chapel to watch it.

            David is our fourth child. On the way to the hospital Jim had written down sixteen boys names on the back of an envelope, just in case (we disqualified Nathaniel to avoid having a “Matt” and a “Nat”. By the time labor became intense, we had narrowed the list of possible names down from sixteen to four (Samuel, Michael, David, and Logan). After the birth, but before we left the hospital that evening, we settled on David, Hebrew for ‘beloved’.

Podcasts

            Yesterday I took an 11 mile walk. I walked to the cemetery via the Minuteman Bike Path and Hartwell Ave. I listened to podcasts: several Freakonomics, then a RadioLab.

            I was way behind in my podcast listening. About two weeks after David died I started listening to Planet Money podcasts again. There was an eight-week backlog on my phone. Listening to them without him was an emotional milestone. Twice a week David and I listened on the way to and from his MGH appointments. Sometime in mid-July he stopped having the energy to focus on them: about the same time that he stopped eating more than 400 calories a day. I hadn’t listened to any on my own while he was alive; there was always the hope that he’d feel up to it next time.

            My walk was wonderful. It was a perfect New England day: sun and brilliant white clouds in the azure blue, with hints of yellow and orange amidst the green. I walked two miles to the Westview Cemetery to visit David’s grave (Maple Ridge section, row B, grave 29-1). The soil is neatly replaced, with grass seed scattered on top, the bouquet of purple flowers that friends brought on Saturday resting at his feet.

            After I had stopped for a while and taken some pictures I continued down Westview St. and reconnected with the bike path. I took it to the Bedford Depot terminus, then walked along Elm Brook in Bedford. I finally turned around, knowing that I had to return home on my own power.