Dave’s Not Here, Man
The title of this post comes from a Cheech and Chong routine. It is not a bad bit but the expression has a different sort of connotation to me. The reference is tied into memories of a dear friend who died after from complications surrounding cancer.
When he first became ill there was period of time in which the cancer impeded his cognitive functions so severely that he began to have severe hallucinations. During this time I received a number of interesting telephone calls from him in which he described being abducted by aliens and asked me to come save him.
As I look back in time it is interesting to see how naive I was about it all. Back then there was no question in my mind that the doctors were going to save his life and that things would just go back to normal. I truly never could have imagined that things would be the way that they are now, but that is a story for a different night.
The reason the reference has such meaning to me is that the docs were able to beat back the cancer and for a time he was hale, healthy and whole. He loved to tell the tale of his illness and how the hallucinations affected him. Every time he told it he referred to that Cheech and Chong bit with great gusto.
“Dave’s not here man!”
We’d all laugh and the conversation would continue as if nothing had happened. Like I said, naive and innocent. Who would have believed that anything could happen to us. We were still in our twenties and invulnerable. But life has a way of opening your eyes to possibilities in a way that can be quite unpleasant. Four years later he was gone and it was only a short time before a few others joined him.
Hmm… I am on a real happy bent, aren’t I.
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