David’s Story

Site created on March 10, 2018

On Wednesday, January 3rd, 2018 David first learned he had throat cancer. He was experiencing a hoarse voice in the months leading up to this, so he went to see an ENT in Glenwood Springs, Colorado to find out what was happening. David was living in Aspen at the time, planning to spend the winter there after having arrived in Colorado from the east coast the first week of December. Since December 12th, he had felt very sick and was suffering from severe rheumatological-like symptoms throughout his whole body. (He later found out that this was a systemic problem as a result of the cancer wreaking havoc on his whole body.)

David's sister, Maribeth, lives in Telluride, Colorado, about a five-hour drive from Aspen, so when he learned he needed to have a biopsy, she drove up to help. They ended up spending the better part of the next four weeks crisscrossing the state to dial in his diagnosis and to line up the best treatment plan for him. It, of course, was the start of an immense emotional journey for all!

David's final diagnosis of Stage 4A laryngeal cancer has been frightening but through every bit of it, he has shown astounding courage and resilience. The tumor is both on his vocal chords and in his thyroid cartilage. 

Geri, David's wife, drove in from their house in Bolton Landing, New York, by early February. After David and Maribeth found a very hopeful treatment plan at the University of Colorado Health in Denver, Geri set up a wonderful healing space–a hard-to-find apartment in Denver–for them to live throughout the duration of his treatment.

Dave's treatment involves a seven-week combined radiation/chemotherapy/immunotherapy program. He has radiation every day, Monday-Friday, which lasts about twenty-minutes per session. His last radiation is scheduled for Monday, April 9th–woo-hoo! The bigger celebrations will come much later, however, because apparently the three weeks after the treatment ends are the worst. He has chemotherapy three times, every 21 days and immunotherapy every two weeks. (More on that at a later date. There's much to report there because Dave is actually a part of a study put on by Pfizer.)

We are asking for support and prayers as David and his caretakers navigate their way through this arduous journey. Apparently throat cancer treatment is one of the most grueling cancer treatments of all. Everything passes by the throat–air, water and food–so breathing, drinking and eating become extremely challenging. We ask that you visualize David healthy, whole and well and strong as a mighty lion to be able to endure these aggressive protocols. We ask that you visualize him cancer free. 

As of this writing (Saturday, March 10, 2018), David has just completed his third week of treatment. The good news is that his tumor is shrinking! The bad and much-expected news is that the side effects of the treatments are really beginning to set in. So it has become difficult for him to breathe and swallow. Still, he is being a trooper and we are all so proud of him. 

Thank you in advance for any love and support you can provide.

Newest Update

Journal entry by Maribeth Clemente

Forever an Inspiration

Grief is such a process. I have been processing a lot of grief since the last time I wrote over two years ago. I had written several posts that contained updates about my dear brother, David. But each time I would stop short of posting them. It has been hard keeping up. Suffice it to say that Dave fought valiantly until the end when he finally succumbed to his cancer on April 8, 2021. (See the obituary I wrote with the help of his wife, Geri, in the Albany Times Union.)

Mom passed exactly three months after Dave. She was, of course, deeply saddened by his death, which undoubtedly accelerated her decline. I was back east for ten months, first to take care of her and then to pack up the family home. It has been loss on top of loss, so forgive me for dropping out like that.

Grieving is loving and in my grief, I have come to discover how very much I loved my mother and brother. Fortunately, they come to visit me often (in spirit) and I have been hearing Dave tell me for quite some time to keep telling his story.

I'm finally ready and I thought that the best way to do that would be to share the tribute I wrote and read at the celebration of life we held for him and my mother in August 2021. I think it sums up David and his journey very well.

February is an especially tender time, one that stirs up even more feelings for me than the anniversary date of his passing. Dave will always be my Valentine. I am grateful for having experienced so much love with this very kind man.

Read on...

Celebrating David

 

Thank you everyone for being here…

 

My earliest memory of Dave is of him as a little boy rocking in the upholstered rocky chair in our wood-paneled den. I can still see him in it, sporting a brush cut, the required haircut of all the Clemente boys during that era. I was likely about 3 or 4, so he was 6 or 7. He would rock and think, rock and think, then rock and rock and think some more. Even as a boy, Dave didn’t say much. But he was always thinking. And if he did say something, you can bet that he chose his words carefully before he spoke.

 

That’s how my brother was his whole life–from the time he was just a tot until the very end. He would pause and think about what he was going to say before uttering a word. And then in the last year or so of his life when he no longer had a voice, he would pause, then mouth his thoughts or write them on his white board. 

 

I read somewhere many years ago that pausing is very much a part of the communication style of Indian peoples, that pauses create emphasis without having to stress a word. Indeed, many cultures believe that pausing before you speak is a sign of wisdom. 

 

David paused. A lot. It made me–and I suspect a lot of other people–hang on to the words that followed. This was a characteristic he adopted from my father. David added something to it though. And that was his million-dollar smile. Who could ever forget Dave’s smile?

 

Dave was a shy boy who grew into a shy man. Yet he was never lacking in warmth. He never seemed disinterested; he was just quiet.

 

I came to learn over the years how this trait could be such a force. And certainly within the last three and a half years of his life during which time he so fiercely battled cancer, I learned that his tendency to be “a man of few words” turned out to be his secret weapon. His big brown and oh-so expressive eyes, in fact, conveyed his thoughts and emotions far more than any long-winded conversations.

 

I’d like to share what Frank Farrell, an old friend of his, wrote about him upon learning of his passing:

 

What I remember most about David was his steady manner. In our teenage and twenty something years, when I first met him, a time filled with more testosterone than good judgement, David seemed effortlessly above the latest de jour, possessed with a quiet wisdom, seeing through much of the skuttle for what it was: motion without much purpose. While others, myself included were bouncing here and there, David was content at home in the kitchen preparing a delicacy. How elegant.

 

His compass was in focus.

 

There is so much to admire about him including his appreciation for finer things, not to accumulate, as is so often the case, but to appreciate. Again, wisdom.

 

A swell guy. Warm, curious, funny and, boy, did he have a booming tennis serve!

 

I think Frank summed up Dave’s early years quite well and not surprisingly, he did not stray much from his calm, steady demeanor throughout his life even in the face of immense adversity.

 

Dave, the home body. It’s important for me to highlight that. He lived at the family home until he was 32. Mom just recently talked about how distraught he was when he was to tell my father that he was leaving 24B and moving into his own place. Somehow Dad recovered from what he possibly considered to be the unthinkable. Dave made it easy on both my parents because he would return home regularly, largely to cook them a fine meal and to give the family cat a few pets. Also, by then Dave was already spending chunks of time out in Colorado and up at the lake, two locales that offered him even more opportunities to spoil his parents and anyone else lucky enough to be in on one of his delicious meals. 

 

And, of course, there was always chuckling involved. Dave liked to snicker and with him, we always had many a laugh. He has only been gone four months and a day now but I can’t seem to remember exactly what we were laughing about. Usually silly stuff, I suppose. At least I’ll never forget his laugh.

 

When I started to write down my thoughts for these words on the occasion of his Celebration of Life, I decided to google pausing before speaking. I was only half surprised to discover a whole range of books and articles about The Power of Pausing. Of course most of us get the fact that it’s a way to think before reacting. One website wrote that pausing allows us time to be gentle with feelings, that it allows feelings to settle. Pausing also allows for self-soothing, which made me think back to Dave’s rocking chair moments. 

 

In any event, most experts agree that pausing in speech is one of the most effective forms of communication one can implement. And for Dave, it came naturally. For me, his pausing made me feel like he was listening to me. He was not focused on what he was going to say next; instead, he seemed interested in hearing what I was saying first. I’m sure many of you had the same experiences with Dave.

 

In the hospital where he sadly spent so much time these past years, he rarely had a problem being understood. He, in fact, was most adept at communicating his needs even when it was virtually impossible to convey them due to a high level of pain, discomfort or the inability to talk. 

 

Certainly the most intense communication I had with Dave–with anyone for that matter–occurred on the night he had his laryngectomy. It was February 14, 2020–Valentine’s Day. Geri and I hesitated going in to see him late at night after his grueling 12-hour surgery. I was devastated to see the scope of the incision that went from beneath one earlobe to the other across the entire breadth of his neck in a very precise pattern filled with angles the likes of which you’d see in a high school geometry class. The fact that all was fastened together by some 50 to 100 staples made it all the more frightening. I cringed inwardly and put on a brave face and said, “We’re so proud of you, Dave. You did great. Dr. Goddard said the surgery was a complete success.”

 

Geri said, “You kicked ass.” And he squeezed her hand hard as we all tried to communicate with each other. Although groggy from the lasting effects of the anesthethia, my brother brightened with our presence and good news, showing that he was super happy to see us and much relieved that all had gone so well. 

 

He mouthed some words that indicated he was trying to tell us something. “Please, bring a pad and a pen,” I asked the nurses.

 

Dave wrote ‘pain, sleep, suction’ and then drew a heart. OK, we understood that he had pain, a situation the nurses were trying to get a handle on, and of course he wanted to sleep. And in order to be comfortable, he needed suctioning of his stoma–now his only breathing pathway–something that he expressed he wanted to do himself, even in his distressed state. When I saw the heart, I felt concern. “Does your heart hurt?” I asked.

 

In response to that question, Dave wrote the word love on the pad, as his eyes filled up. This man, my sweet brother, was so consumed with gratitude that he wanted to express his love to us all–to Geri, to me and all the medical professionals that were helping him.

 

I will never forget that moment and so many others like it. David truly was the face of courage in so much of his life but most especially in how he heroically battled cancer for 3 1/2 years.

 

As you can imagine, everyone in the hospitals loved him. One flash of his big eyes and big teeth served to convey how much appreciation he had for all of them. Yes, I suppose that that was much of what made Dave so likable. He was always so appreciative. And generous. He never took anyone or anything for granted.

 

We had many marvelous hospital moments. Thank God! We spent so much time there that it would have been a shame not to use that journey as an opportunity for growth, a chance to appreciate what is really important in this world.

 

One night when I was at his bedside wrapping up some important business we were taxed with in order to satisfy the demands of the far-less compassionate people in our family, we shared a tell-tale moment of what Dave considered to be of importance. It was the night before he was going in for surgery to repair a botched feeding tube problem. He had gone 14 days without any nutrition and he was extremely weak and weary. But still, he had some parting thoughts for me before I headed back to the hotel. He held his white board and tapped his marker on it. Thinking, thinking, thinking. As always, the night before any operation felt like a bit of a cliffhanger because there was always that chance that you might not see that person again.

 

“Anything else?” I asked.

 

Tap, tap, tap. He screwed up his mouth in that classic David Clemente way and finally began to scribble something down.

 

“What are you doing for dinner?” he wrote.

 

That was Dave all the way. Not only did he love food and if he wasn’t cooking for someone or sharing a meal with them, he was planning the next one to be enjoyed. That was a big way for him to share love.

 

Even in the last year of his life, he continued to make gourmet meals for Mom and Geri.

 

That was quite wonderful but it sometimes made the rest of us uncomfortable. Dave spent about five days with Mom and me in February during which time Mom and I tried to play down the whole eating aspect, something that is not easy to do in the Clemente house. We decided that I would prepare very simple meals for the two of us and that we wouldn’t talk so much about our food the way we normally did. We were all going to be eating in front of the TV in order to de-emphasize the dining experience. While Mom and I ate our less-than memorable meals, Dave sat in his chair and pumped a superior-quality smoothie into his belly, an extraordinary health mixture that he had blended up with a special nutritional formula, fresh greens, avocado and all kinds of other power ingredients. To witness this, felt heartbreaking the first couple of days. But by Day 3, my immense admiration for my brother was once again overtaken by any kind of pity I felt for him. By that time, I felt the courage to ask him how he was doing. I knew how he was doing medically but I wanted to have a better sense of how he was mentally. After I asked, he flashed his immense brown eyes in an affirmative manner and mouthed GOOD. He gave me a big thumbs up for emphasis.

 

He said he was doing GOOD! What an inspiration! 

 

Dave was also very much of a source of support for me, as I’m sure he was for many others. “How’s it going on the Goodship Lollipop, b.?” he texted. Even without us being able to have a direct conversation, he supported and navigated me through the often challenging waters at the family home. Once, he even helped me and the septic pump guy pinpoint the location of the septic tank, which was covered beneath a thick blanket of snow in our backyard on a gloomy winter’s day.

 

My dear, sweet brother. Even in texting, he would pause. And I’d hang on to his every word. Sometimes we’d have a “phone conversation” and I’d talk–being the chatty Cathy that I am–I would yammer on about this and that, filling him in as best I could about all of the news, important and trivial alike. He’d type his response into an email. Since he henpecked the keyboard, his pauses with this method of communication were painfully long. But at least I could debrief as much as possible.

 

Our last communication was by text on Thursday, April, 8, a glorious spring day in the Adirondacks, the day in which he died. I texted him after we had had a series of email exchanges with our lawyer. I lamented that he had to deal with all of the legal BS in the midst of his health problems, namely some very serious bleeding issues that ultimately lead to his demise. Here’s what he wrote back:

 

Hi b…yes…it all pretty much sucks, although it does look like a beautiful day!

 

I’m in the midst of trying to deal with paperwork, which is very frustrating with my handicap. Maybe I will get to take lidda for a short walk…don’t have a lot of energy!

 

Enjoy the nice weather!

 

Can’t you just hear those pauses? I think that here they were further emphasized by the  dot, dot, dots.

 

And how about those exclamation marks? Seeking to know the hidden meaning in just about everything, I couldn’t help but google overuse of exclamation points. The first entry was from Everydaypsych, which states the following:

 

When used properly, exclamation marks can be particularly valuable for communicating gratefulness.

 

Gratefulness, ah yes. That was David. When he was first diagnosed with cancer, I told him that I would always be there for him and that I would help him to fight that battle. I also told him that I promised he would feel the most love he had ever felt. And he did. He felt so much love from Geri, Mom, Frank, me and so many of you. 

 

A couple of months into his treatment, I organically started writing about it. I asked Dave first if he’d like me to do that and he readily said, “yes.” That was surprising since he was such a private person, however, I could tell that my stories and the outpouring of love that they prompted, helped him every step of the way. 

 

I posted on occasion throughout his cancer journey and even at one point asked people to send him cards. He was inundated. You cannot imagine how happy that made him. Dave was in awe of the love and support shown to him.

 

I know he would be in amazement of the love and support we are showing him here today. And how apt it is that we are celebrating his life along with our mother’s.

 

In any event, we are all here to celebrate our beloved David and his sweet mother, Mary Ellen, that created him. Here’s to both of them! Here’s to David, Mom AND Dad and Phil! May we all continue to keep their memory alive! Cheers!

 
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