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A wonderful visit yesterday with our Yapese friends, Theo and Antonia -- and three of their kids and one of their grandkids, Tinig, who is cuter than a goddamn button. They fed us Yapese barbecue (ribs and chicken) with rice, steamed taro, and a tapioca/yam mixture. So delicious, so nostalgic. Theo, who always claims that he doesn't remember me from our childhood on Yap in the '60s, said this time that when I wore a thu, the Yapese loincloth, I didn't try to hide my white butt like the other white kids did. They would spread the cloth of the thu to try to hide their butts, but mine was rolled like a rope, he said, showing every inch of white skin. Hey, I said, if you've got it, flaunt it! Theo always says the Yapese have a special mocking word for the whiteness of white butts that have never seen the sun.
We got caught up on all the news, but there was one bit of news that shocked me to my core. I can't get it out of my mind. Theo told us that Dave died a few months ago. Dave was our dive instructor out there in 2002. He and his family also lived in the house across the road from us in Kaday village. His wife was a relative of Theo's. We hung out with him a lot, and I really, really liked him. Such a great sense of humor. He always told us that PADI (the Professional Association of Dive Instructors) stood for Put Another Dollar In. He was from Florida, and I can't even remember how he ended up on Yap, married to a Yapese woman. He was probably between me and my brother in age, maybe around 50 when he died.
I just can't get over it. He had apparently taken some people out diving, and a young woman started heading away from the group, going deep without heeding the danger. He went after her, and by the time he caught up with her she was out of air. He shared his air with her as they headed to the surface, but he started running low too and so he held his breath and let her have the rest. One of the cardinal rules of diving is never hold your breath, because as the pressure level changes so does the volume of the air. Air expands as you move higher, and it can cause damage as it expands. They made it to the surface, and he said he had a headache. He went to the hospital but told them he was feeling fine now. They let him go home, and he went to bed and never woke up.
I woke up this morning holding my breath, imagining the moment when he decided to hold his. He certainly would have known that he was putting himself at risk. But why did he leave the hospital? Did he really think he was out of danger? Would it have made any difference if he'd stayed there?
I've been thinking about all the little moments with him out on the dive boat, and all the other times we just sat around shooting the shit. Usually I just listened to his stories. On one of my last days out there he came over to our house with something he called Pain Killer. It was his own private recipe: rum and several fruit juices. I can't remember if he told me the one super secret ingredient (he wanted to know if I could guess it), but it would be in my journal if he did. We drank Pain Killer and he entertained us with stories of dives he'd been on around the world. He was a funny, funny guy, a real sweet heart. Another castaway living about as far as you can get from the bustle of the world. His parents didn't bring his body back to Florida. They had him buried on Yap. As my brother said, it's what he would have wanted.
Today I'm thinking about breathing. Today I'm thinking about Dave. His dive shop was called Beyond the Reef. The diver in the Beyond the Reef logo on that page is my brother, and Dave also made a T-shirt for the dive shop using that same photo. Here's a photo Dave took of me and my niece during one of our dive classes:
I don't know how to close this post. I just can't seem to digest the news.
Update: Found this picture of Dave on the Beyond the Reef website:
Update: Dave's brother posted a tribute to him: Remembering Dave Vecella. Turns out Dave was only 43 when he died. Must have been the silver hair that fooled us. Some very sweet memories in the comments. His brother writes:
Dave was a giant teddy bear of a guy with a great sense of humor, a wonderful laugh, a constant twinkle in his eye, and the kindest, biggest, and most generous heart you could ever imagine. He was my “best man” in my wedding 22 years ago, and he always will be. Although his death obviously was a terrible tragedy, a greater tragedy would have been if he had passed from here without ever fulfilling his dreams. Instead, he lived them each and every day. So though his life ended way too soon, the quality of that life was about as high as that of anyone I have ever known. Perhaps those of us who knew and loved Dave can best honor his life by incorporating more of his spirit into our own lives — to pursue our real passions, and live our dreams, every day, because none of us know how many days we have. I love you, little bro’, and will never, ever forget you.
We got caught up on all the news, but there was one bit of news that shocked me to my core. I can't get it out of my mind. Theo told us that Dave died a few months ago. Dave was our dive instructor out there in 2002. He and his family also lived in the house across the road from us in Kaday village. His wife was a relative of Theo's. We hung out with him a lot, and I really, really liked him. Such a great sense of humor. He always told us that PADI (the Professional Association of Dive Instructors) stood for Put Another Dollar In. He was from Florida, and I can't even remember how he ended up on Yap, married to a Yapese woman. He was probably between me and my brother in age, maybe around 50 when he died.
I just can't get over it. He had apparently taken some people out diving, and a young woman started heading away from the group, going deep without heeding the danger. He went after her, and by the time he caught up with her she was out of air. He shared his air with her as they headed to the surface, but he started running low too and so he held his breath and let her have the rest. One of the cardinal rules of diving is never hold your breath, because as the pressure level changes so does the volume of the air. Air expands as you move higher, and it can cause damage as it expands. They made it to the surface, and he said he had a headache. He went to the hospital but told them he was feeling fine now. They let him go home, and he went to bed and never woke up.
I woke up this morning holding my breath, imagining the moment when he decided to hold his. He certainly would have known that he was putting himself at risk. But why did he leave the hospital? Did he really think he was out of danger? Would it have made any difference if he'd stayed there?
I've been thinking about all the little moments with him out on the dive boat, and all the other times we just sat around shooting the shit. Usually I just listened to his stories. On one of my last days out there he came over to our house with something he called Pain Killer. It was his own private recipe: rum and several fruit juices. I can't remember if he told me the one super secret ingredient (he wanted to know if I could guess it), but it would be in my journal if he did. We drank Pain Killer and he entertained us with stories of dives he'd been on around the world. He was a funny, funny guy, a real sweet heart. Another castaway living about as far as you can get from the bustle of the world. His parents didn't bring his body back to Florida. They had him buried on Yap. As my brother said, it's what he would have wanted.
Today I'm thinking about breathing. Today I'm thinking about Dave. His dive shop was called Beyond the Reef. The diver in the Beyond the Reef logo on that page is my brother, and Dave also made a T-shirt for the dive shop using that same photo. Here's a photo Dave took of me and my niece during one of our dive classes:
I don't know how to close this post. I just can't seem to digest the news.
Update: Found this picture of Dave on the Beyond the Reef website:
Update: Dave's brother posted a tribute to him: Remembering Dave Vecella. Turns out Dave was only 43 when he died. Must have been the silver hair that fooled us. Some very sweet memories in the comments. His brother writes:
Dave was a giant teddy bear of a guy with a great sense of humor, a wonderful laugh, a constant twinkle in his eye, and the kindest, biggest, and most generous heart you could ever imagine. He was my “best man” in my wedding 22 years ago, and he always will be. Although his death obviously was a terrible tragedy, a greater tragedy would have been if he had passed from here without ever fulfilling his dreams. Instead, he lived them each and every day. So though his life ended way too soon, the quality of that life was about as high as that of anyone I have ever known. Perhaps those of us who knew and loved Dave can best honor his life by incorporating more of his spirit into our own lives — to pursue our real passions, and live our dreams, every day, because none of us know how many days we have. I love you, little bro’, and will never, ever forget you.
