The Last Conversation

The last face-to-face conversation between Dave and I was not a happy one. But it sure was fruitful.

While the conversation began amicably, it soon turned sour when Dave suggested that I start helping our mom more with her laptop. With this simple suggestion, he pressed a button inside me that triggered a Pandora's box of emotions. I just think that I was too brash and felt too smart for brotherly advice. I genuinely felt like, Where have you been this whole time I've been helping mom? And I did say something to that effect, but his response was simply to walk away.

However, something brought Dave back. I think it was utter disbelief that I had mouthed off to him for only a minor suggestion. I think that he was thinking that I was on my male period. The emotions on both sides were boiling over--over nothing. This was the great tragedy of our last meeting, that we fought for nothing.

But here's the triumph: that we solidified our relationship.

You see, in the last months of Dave's life we kept little contact. This became increasingly frustrating for me the more I came to admire him. I merely wanted a front seat to greatness. So I decided to take that opportunity of boiling emotions to make an emotional appeal: that he try to keep more contact with me. It was something that I didn't want to have to say, because up until that point he and I were always cool with the occasional brotherly get-together. But unbeknownst to him, a desire to see him more was simmering inside me. Not only did I want a front seat to greatness, but I wanted to watch his development as a self-taught virtuoso and be a traveler with him on that journey.

Dave acquiesced, and a few days later sent me an invite on Facebook. I added him, but never really wrote him anything. I regret that. In any event, I can't help but appreciate the gesture. It was one of the fondest gestures he'd ever shown to me, although no equal to the moment at the basketball court several years ago when he was preparing to leave to Miami to live with Alex: he told me he loved me. Or the moment when he stood up for me when some rabble-rousers were trying to beat me up. It was at the same place: the basketball court. So many memories.

Dave said something in that conversation that has since intrigued me. After discussing the hassles of dating Hispanic women and his great passion to pursue music, on his disbelief return trip, he said that he and I weren't going to have our mom forever. We had to absorb all that we could from her. This solemn and ironic observation has haunted my sleep.

Another item that haunts my sleep is that on that same day, right after he left, I thought to myself, Why didn't you just let that issue go? What if that's the last conversation you ever have with him? I was, and am still, studying the Tao Te Ching, and I knew well that making something out of nothing is not in harmony with the Tao. I thought about it for a few seconds and relinquished the thought. Little did I know that it would come back with sound and fury.

Life has ways of giving us cues. That was perhaps a cue for me to call Dave and apologize, though I did not. The very fact that he added me on Facebook and later helped me troubleshoot a computer issue over the phone tells me that he forgave me. However, the question of how, exactly, he perceived me when he died ambushes me during random moments. Like everything else, it's another mystery that he took to the grave with him.

The peace that Dave and I reconciled our relationship, however, will always harbor in me.