The Month of March and Mortality

Remembering David Alan Steffen, 12/25/1961 – 3/20/2021

I found out yesterday that a very good friend finally succumbed to lung cancer on Saturday. I had spent about ninety minutes with him a week and a half earlier, and I was afraid, that afternoon, that it might be the last time I’d see him. We had worked together for about six years and had become good friends during that time based upon our common interests in music, politics, cycling, soccer, and beer. When my wife Leslie died from a brain tumor in March of 2015 David was a quiet and welcome source of strength, never offering sentimental platitudes nor words meant to inspire strength or courage. He simply allowed me to gradually work my way back to what would become my new normal on my own terms, and accepted the eccentric role I had settled into. If I remember correctly he told me of his diagnosis at the Red Rock Amphitheater the night we were at a concert where Hot Tuna, the Wood Brothers, and the Tedeschi Trucks Band performed.

David and I worked on a team that created automated health status questionnaires, research surveys, appointment reminders, and other electronic interactive communication methods for members of a Colorado healthcare system. I was the team’s project manager, and David was an application developer/programmer. Throughout my professional career I’ve been lucky to work with a handful of rare individuals whose competence was such that they could perform excellent work while maintaining a sense of humor, enthusiasm for their work, proper perspective on deadlines and others’ perceptions of stressful circumstances, and overall make it a pleasure to be part of a team. In addition to being a good friend, David was a valued colleague. We were also among a small group at the Kaiser Permanente Institute for Health Research that often commuted to work by bicycle, and on nice days several of us would meet for noon rides around the Cherry Creek Reservoir. On many Fridays we retreated late in the afternoon to Comrade Brewing Company on Iliff, just down the road from our offices, where we both found that their award-winning IPA, Super Power, was our favorite beer. After he was diagnosed David cut his work hours back to 24 hours a week, taking Mondays and Tuesdays off. After I retired we occasionally got together on these “free” days for hikes at places not far from Denver, including Meyers Ranch, Staunton State Park, Golden Gate Canyon State Park, Mt. Falcon, and White Ranch Park.

When David was younger he was a fan of Frank Zappa, and had a small group of friends, including his brother Jeff, who in middle age had continued to get together for occasional concerts. Back when Zappa was alive and popular I was in awe of Zappa’s music but did not ever see him in concert or buy any of his records, so I did not have the level of Zappa sophistication that these people did. But David knew I played guitar and appreciated Zappa’s music, so he included me on several occasions when he organized concert events with these friends. Over a four year period we saw Dweezil Zappa, Frank’s son, three different times: once at the Boulder Theater, once at the Arvada Center, and once at the Ogden Theater on Colfax Ave. For the most part Dweezil covered his father’s well-known pieces. Our shared love of music took us to other concerts as well, including the Tedeschi Trucks Band twice at Red Rocks, Mark Knofler at Red Rocks, Keller Williams at the Ogden Theater, local bluegrass bands Turkey Foot, Chain Station, and Lonesome Days at Swallow Hill, and free summer concerts at the Levitt Pavilion in Ruby Hill Park.

Before I knew David he had competed in cyclocross, an intense, often muddy, off-road bicycle competition involving jumps, obstacles, and sections where riders must dismount, pick up their bikes, and carry them while running before remounting. By the time we met he had settled into the more sedate past time of road cycling, but was still a strong rider. As humbling as it was to try to keep up with him on a road bike, it didn’t compare to the challenge of skiing with him. I went cross country skiing with him last February. David grew up in Vermont and his high school had a cross country ski team. I didn’t expect to be able to keep up with him on skis, but I didn’t expect him to be as amazingly fast as he was, especially since this was three plus years after his cancer diagnosis. He told me on our drive back to Denver that his high school team had won two state championships, to which he was a major contributor. Of course this was just mentioned as an aside.

David’s lung cancer was non-small cell, and he told me when I was informed of his diagnosis that with the state-of-the art treatment he was on he could expect three years of good health, after which he might be able to switch to a different treatment which could give him another few years of good health. I met him once over this past summer when pandemic restrictions were relaxed a bit and more than three years after learning of his diagnosis, and he told me that his most recent scans had found spots on his brain and liver, but there was hope that radiation could keep these in check. I was concerned, though, when he said he couldn’t enjoy beer anymore, and didn’t have much of an appetite. We traded a few emails and text messages over the next several months, but the pandemic kept us from doing anything social.

Sometime around early February I received a call from David. He said he and his wife Nichole were taking a walk around Sloan’s Lake, just a few blocks from my house, and I should meet them there. He had a little trouble describing where they were, and I had a little trouble following his directions, but after a while I made my way to the parking lot on the northeast side of the lake, near where I had watched the city build a breakwater and put in a sculpture of a pelican head the first year I’d lived in the neighborhood. When I finally saw them along the path that circumnavigates the lake Nichole was pushing David in a wheelchair, and he was looking quite frail. My heart broke to see that his condition had declined to that point, and it was also such a reminder of Leslie’s last weeks before she entered hospice care.

One morning in early March, 2015 Leslie and I were walking down to Sloan’s Lake, still thinking that she was going to be that one in one thousand glioblastoma patients that lived a satisfying five plus years following diagnosis. So on this day, barely 13 months after her diagnosis, when she asked me if I thought it was strange how the mountains were reflected both on the lake and again above the mountains in the sky, I suspected things for her had taken a turn for the worse. Her visual disturbances continued to progress throughout the day, and it turned out to be the last day she was able to spend any time away from the house without being in a wheelchair. Although we visited Sloan’s Lake together several times over the next two weeks, I always had to push her in a wheelchair from that point on.

As it turns out that was the second to last time I would see David, and my memory of him that day is so similar to my final memories of Leslie at a spot she loved the final days before I could no longer care for her at home. As painful as it is to lose people we love – and there is nothing more valuable or meaningful in life than those we love and care about – I think about what the dead have lost, and I think about Leslie each time I take pleasure in some little thing, and how much she loved being alive. Now I will be thinking of David, too, every time I get on the bike, or sip an IPA, or hear a great guitar lick, or hike a mountain trail. He, like Leslie, valued his life more than most, and did not take it for granted, or let himself be frustrated by the little things that others allow to rob them of pleasure. I owe it to their memories to continue to be mindful of the pleasures of life as I enjoy them, and remind others of those pleasures, and to do my best to enhance the lives of those I am around while I am alive. I have heard others say they don’t deserve to live on when their loved ones are gone, or that they should have been to ones to die, or that their lives no longer have meaning now that they are alone. My intellectual answer, although it is not always heartfelt, is that my life has taken on additional meaning as I find purpose in enjoying and taking notice of the life that is left for me, a life that those who are gone have been denied.

3 Replies to “The Month of March and Mortality”

  1. A lovely remembrance of your friend, David, as well as your soul-mate, Leslie.

  2. Thank you for sharing. It opened up similar memories of friends and loved ones we have left behind.

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