Saying Goodbye to Driver 8

I was at a Nashville Predators' game a little more than 20 months ago when I got a call from my friend, Doug Brown.  Thinking back now, it's like a bad dream.

"David Easterling has a glioblastoma," he said.  

The very moment I received that telephone call, I think, is when I realized that I was old.  

Young people's high school friends - hell, middle aged people's high school friends - don't get cancer or brain tumors.  At least, that's the way I felt at the time.  Suddenly, unequivocally, old.  

It was like a door had blown open in the middle of winter and a blast of cold, arctic air had hit me right in the face before I could get the door closed.  

I immediately called my friend Rohan, a vascular neurosurgeon at Vanderbilt.  Matter of factly but with a the utmost caring and kindness, because that's the kind of person and doctor he is, Rohan gave me the disheartening news.

"Your friend is going to die from this.  The average life expectancy is 14 to 16 months.  He may live longer - it happens - but he is not going to survive a glioblastoma."

20 months after that conversation, David died in his sleep on a Friday night while his closest high school friends gathered together for a muted celebration of our graduation 40 years ago. 

To say David fought the good fight, never acknowledging he wasn't going to beat the glioblastoma is an understatement.  But I don't want to write about that this morning.  I want to write about the David that I knew, 40 years ago, and the man he became.

The thing that initially struck me about David was his appearance.  His dark hair was always neatly parted on the side and he wore glasses.  Average height.  Average build.  Average looking, to be honest.  In those days, in high school, a conservative dresser.  He struck me as someone who dressed and acted like a high school aged boy from the 1950's.  

What I learned, though, is that underneath the conservative appearing exterior was a fiercely independent, confident person with a biting sense of humor, a love for music, and a relentless desire to succeed.  

To me, David was, first and foremost, a salesman, in all of the best ways.  What he sold varied greatly.  His love of R.E.M. and other music.  His love of Kentucky basketball, Green Bay Packers football, St. Louis Cardinals baseball.  Barrack Obama.  All of it and so much more.

David turned an ability to sell into an amazingly successful career  in Louisville, Kentucky.  He was a serial entrepreneur, staring multiple businesses.  When he sold his company in the last year, he created generational wealth for his family.  

Yesterday, I drove to Louisville, Kentucky, for a celebration of life at the country club he belonged to there.  Several of us from our high school class were there and we talked quietly with each other on a warm, late summer afternoon, remembering David and enjoying each other's company.  We listened when his wife, Mary, addressed the group and brought us all to tears.  David's children, Hayden and Emily, spoke movingly about their love for their father, as well.  

I drove back to Nashville late in the afternoon, lost in my thoughts.  

It's hard to lose one of your own, especially the first one.