David.

(David is in the striped shirt)

Last night, a very dear friend and family member passed away, having been involved in a workplace accident earlier in the week that left him brain dead. This is the way I saw him. Not just the way I look back at him, but the way I saw him when he was alive.

David was the kind of person who would do anything for anyone. If you needed a chat, he would talk. If you needed a job done, he would work. If you needed a boat to keep you afloat, he would build it. If you needed a shirt on your back, he would take his off and give it to you with no complaint or judgement.  He was so rawly honest that in some ways it was scary. He would tell things to you strait, no fucking around. Thats how it is, lets move on or fix it.

When he rang, I would know dad would  be unavailable for at least 40 minutes. Minimum. There would be swearing, hysterical laughter and a lot of "yeah mates". David came to stay quite a number of times, and it never ceased to amaze me how much the man could eat. It was like, he didn't eat all day, but when it came to dinner time, look out. Third helpings the size of my dinner and desert put together was nothing out of the ordinary. He also always wore thongs. I don't think I ever saw him in anything else. Maybe his work boots once, but always his damn thongs. Sometimes I thought it was inappropriate attire, but it was quite clearly not something he cared about. I suppose in Bryon bay, you can get away with going anywhere in thongs because it's usually too damn hot for anything else anyway.

The last time I saw David, in October last year, Dad and I had road tripped to Byron bay, and we were staying right in town. Carla, one of the other cousins, came and stayed in the same hotel as us, and David came in to go to the pub with dad. I didn't much fancy heading to the pub with them as I knew the conversation would be above my levels of understanding of the middle aged male brain, so I told them to ring me when they were ready for dinner. Unfortunately my phone crapped out and they couldn't get through so instead they stayed and had a few more drinks at the pub. Finally, they thought they had better walk home to make sure I was still alive, so I met them halfway, and we decided to go to dinner at this asian place where David was pretty devo about the portion sizes.

The following night, we all decided to go out for dinner with more extended family, and somehow afterwards, David, Dad, Carla and Myself ended up at the pub. I the 21 year old, was the most sober out of all of them. David and  Dad hit the bourbon and cokes, and before you knew it, the pub was closing, it was one in the morning, and David wanted to get a taxi home. Those are the last words I clearly remember him saying to me. "Don't worry, I do this all the time, it's fine." And that one sentence made me question my own social life, because frankly, a night out with Dad and his cousins was the biggest I had had in years.

This hardly does the man justice... but I feel like I was privileged to know someone that awesome. I just wanted to express that.