Thursday, 9 September 2004
remembering dave
When I saw the email in my inbox from my ex-husband’s sister, I knew in my heart that it couldn’t be good news. I hadn’t heard from Dave in nearly three years, despite an attempt to contact him two years ago when we were at the beach near his home in Pensacola. This year I hadn’t bothered to try, assuming that he didn’t want to see us.
What I didn’t know was that on August 28th, while we were just a few miles away, Davison Lewis Tudder passed away in a Pensacola hospital. His sister said he’d been sick for several years, but mental health issues that had plagued him since his father’s death in ‘96 had caused him to become reclusive and unwilling to see a doctor. By the time his mother’s housekeeper forced him to go to the hospital in May, he was in the advanced stages of ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease).
We were married for three years, and I know that most of that was a happy time for him. I hoped that after we split up, he’d find someone else and go on to have a happy and full life. It broke my heart to find out that instead he had spent the last eight years fighting both mental and physical illnesses.
There’s not much I can do at this point, except grieve his death—and remember his life. And share it with you, so that you’ll know that he made a difference in the world.
He was smart and funny, generous and caring.
When we divorced, he insisted on paying half of my car payments so that I wouldn’t have to sell my very safe Honda Prelude and buy another car. That Prelude eventually saved my life, and my children’s lives, when we were hit by a truck in 1999.
Everyone who knew him had at some point received a complex diagram drawn on a napkin…he was so full of ideas and information that it spilled out of him, and he loved explaining technical concepts. A quick search of Usenet finds a slew of articles in which he patiently and clearly explained to people on audio and computer newsgroups how to perform specific tasks.
He quit college before he finished, but his knowledge and intelligence earned him a place as an engineer at a number of major telecom companies. He worked on MCI’s first implementation of SS7, which I didn’t appreciate at all until I had to teach about it during my first years at RIT. I called him then, and ruefully admitted my regret at not having paid more attention to those napkin diagrams.
He was extraordinarily patient, and was one of those people who knew that everyone has a story worth hearing if you’re willing to stop for long enough to listen carefully.
He died nearly alone, estranged from his friends and most of his family. But even if he’d drifted away from the people who’d been touched by him, I suspect that most of us hadn’t forgotten him. I wish I could have told him that before he died. I hope that some of his old friends will tell us that here in the comments.
Tonight I grieve the loss of a good man, a man I once loved, a man who deserved a longer and richer life.
