David Padilla’s Memorial Tribute August 23, 2020

The gratitude I feel for all of you who have left your memories, photos, and tributes to honor David’s life is enormous.  Your words of love and kindness have helped me transcend my pain and come to terms with the fact David is now free of pain. He is free of his physical body, partially crippled since his stroke in December of 2012.

Earlier this morning I took a walk and saw his smile on the markings of a tree. Yesterday, a bird sat on my window and began to chirp. It was an unfamiliar sound. When I walked over to the window, I saw a blue jay and immediately saw David in my mind’s eye wearing the blue and white jacket he loved. I guess I will see and hear him everywhere for a long while.

Meanwhile, I wanted to share two episodes with you from when David was a little boy. I wrote these as David lay in the hospital after his stroke. I include these in a book I wrote ‘Love in the Time of Sickness’ where I chronicled David’s road to recovery.

David had the most amazing strength. The most amazing smile. The most amazing love for music. The most amazing desire to survive. He never gave up. He lives on through us in all the different ways each of us remembers him.  

My love and appreciation to you all,

Kirby

David’s aunt

February 17, 2013 New York

Yesterday was David’s 52nd birthday. After his devastating stroke I never thought he would live to see 52. Am grateful he has. As I sat in front of my computer early yesterday trying to finish my continuing education classes (which I have to do every two years to maintain my real estate broker’s license) I received word that “there were no visitation restrictions for David.”

He is now in a nursing home in Orlando, Florida.

The news, even though we’re still over 1,000 miles apart, initially filled me with a rush of relief: “I can finally speak with him and see him!” I have missed him so very much. He has been the only constant family member in my life. I have, in turn, been the same for him. Our family was never what anyone would call “normal” or “functional” or like any other family I’ve ever known.

My parents’ offspring are loosely related. We are all half brothers and sisters. Even those who believed were full brothers and sisters have in time discovered they only shared one parent: my mother. We are also spread apart in huge age gaps and generations. So that when David was born, I was only 6 years old.

My mother, who ruled the home in what seemed to be constant rage, also drove a wedge between all us random kids. She didn’t teach any of us how to be friends with one another. In time I realized she had to be the center of attention: she was a narcissist. In time most of my siblings would also come to the same conclusion. But no one, not a one of us, ever foresaw the cursed arrow she flung into the future would pierce the souls of her grandchildren inflicting upon their innocent hearts the same unbearable pain we had to endure as a result of her cruelty.

David was my older sister’s baby and even after he was born, they both continued to live with us in a large apartment on the Upper West Side.

When he learned to walk, he would find his way into my bedroom almost every morning and would persistently nudge at my arm until my eyes opened. His little fingers would dig into my skin and he’d let out sweet little baby giggles of triumph.

Rubbing the sleep off my eyes I remember I always climbed out of bed and scooped him up into my arms laying him down gently so I could hug him or rub his tummy or scratch his back.

That’s how our bond was formed, I guess. Somehow this little boy with the most beautiful smile on the planet, caramel colored bright eyes, and tons of soft brown hair all over his head instinctively knew I would comfort him. It was the only bond I ever formed with any of the kids in that apartment we called a home.

And yesterday David became 52. I called him and he was so happy to hear me on the other end of the phone.

“I love you Kirby,” his voice and speech are now different after the strokes. His words drag out slowly as if each one is embedded deep into a wall and he’s pulling at them with all his might. Some of his words are almost difficult to understand or even hear. But I was just happy to hear him say anything.

“I miss you. Come see me,” he added and my heart almost burst with happiness and despair that I may lose him at any moment. I mentally calculate that I haven’t seen him in almost two months and that on this day last year he wanted a cheesecake and complained that his mother hadn’t wished him a Happy Birthday.

“I will, I will,” I promised wondering why from out of nowhere I am suddenly being given the green light by my two half-sisters.

I keep him on the phone as long as I can. A little over a half hour. And then about an hour later my sister (the one who is just one year younger than me) calls and starts to talk as though nothing has happened. They’ve blocked me from visiting, but now it’s lifted? I’m totally confused.

She mentions David’s mom is getting a Power of Attorney on Monday to try to keep me away from him and tells me that she was in Florida last week visiting him. Her conversation made no sense until she said: “David adores you. You and him have a very special bond.”

“I know,” I replied still not understanding why she was on the phone. I can see him, but I can’t because now his mother is getting Power of Attorney?

“I have no part in this. I am only his proxy,” she says. She goes on to tell me the nursing home has conducted psychological tests on David and they have declared him to be incapacitated with early signs of dementia.

The words float around in my mind and I try to hold on to them like the string of a broken balloon: incapacitated, dementia. Those words slip away from me. I hear her speaking but I am thinking of the boy who turned into a man who spent his life mostly unloved and unnoticed by both his mother and this woman on the phone who is his other aunt who wasn’t there for him until the day he had a stroke.

I hear her rattle on about her obligations as his health surrogate. And then hours after our conversation I get it. Having spoken with several attorneys I am able to digest why she called me. Legally the person named as his “surrogate” would be the family member he trusted the most. That person would be me. Except it wasn’t. She usurped the role and in so doing detailed not only David’s recovery but my entire life.

However, on his birthday, David and I were, for a few minutes, safe in the feeling that maybe these women who I call my sisters will let us continue to be the loving aunt and loving nephew as we have always been to one another.

December 4, 2012 Florida

My two sisters and Wilson are long gone while I stayed behind camping out at a nearby hotel. I decorate David’s hospital room with Christmas decorations. Expensive ones from the gift shop on the ground level since I don’t have a car and only know how to get to and from the hospital. Which I do by calling a cab. I spend my days perched next to David on a hard, uncomfortable chair wiping down his face, his arms and the back of his neck trying to keep him clean.

He was still spending a lot of time sleeping or slipping in and out of consciousness – I never knew nor dare asked which one but when he was awake, we’d talk. Or rather I’d talk and he’d listen.

“Do you remember the red whale David?”

His head was propped up with an extra pillow, the TV was on the animal channel, and the day nurse was busy behind what looked like a large computer.

He looked at me sideways and shook his head.

For the 100th time since he was born, I told him our little story.

“When you were a little boy, we all went to the dollar store on Broadway. Marie and I were each given one dollar to buy whatever we wanted for ourselves. But you were given nothing because you were still too little. As soon as we walked into the store you pointed to a plastic red whale. It was high on a shelf and had a sign that read fifty-nine cents. I knew that if I bought you the red whale, I wouldn’t have enough money to buy myself anything. But you kept pointing and staring at the red whale and so when it was time for me to say what it was I wanted I said I wanted the red whale. You hugged that red plastic whale all way back home, David.”

My hand was on his left one. The good one and he squeezed it really hard.