MY FRIEND DAVID !!!!

I first met David through the forum a few years ago. He contacted me privately regarding my market profile work and soon we were exchanging trading ideas on a regular basis. We also realized over time that we shared some common ideas regarding family and spirituality and had a common heritage. He was retired from the medical profession and in the early 1990's wrote articles for Stocks and Commodities magazine. You may remember him from his few postings here on the forum under the user name "DAFYDD".

He and his wife of 53 years sent my kids online birthday cards and even sent my youngest a present in the mail when she was born in 2009. It isn't very often that an online relationship evolves the way ours did. David also spent a lot of time through emails helping me in my attempts to resolve an ongoing medical condition and was the person who encouraged me to start a swimming program. He did all this while at the same time battling cancer. He told me he had only had 2 - 3 years to live .

As time went on we talked less and less about trading and David seemed to focus more and more on politics and religeon. He was in the middle of writing a trading book and I would constantly ask how it was going and his cancer treatment. He would avoid those questions and I became frustrated with him. David and I drifted apart last July.

Since then I thought about David often but always found some excuse to delay writing him an email. Always putting it off. This past Christmas I recieved a card from his wife telling me that David passed away on August 19th and that he always cherised our friendship. What I failed to realize due to my own selfish thoughts was that here is a man dying who has a lot to say and little time to say it. Those were issues that were imprortant to him and I was being a terrible listener. I was being a terrible friend. I lost sight of what was important and got caught up in my day to day life.

I don't have any profound wisdom to impart to the forum on death, dying or friendship. I certainly am not qualified as a writer to give David a fitting tribute or to convey the impact this man had on my life. A stranger I met through this forum !

The message here is to spend more time listening to others than talking. Give people more room to express their opinions and stop being so critical. Be flexible and above all cherish those relationships that mean something to you. Life happens fast and in a blink of an eye things change.

Bruce

Thanks for writing that Bruce - I'm sorry that he's gone.

If anybody wants to see the posts that DAFYDD (David) wrote then go the search page:
http://www.mypivots.com/board/search
and set:

Search by Member: DAFYDD
Start Date: 2/29/2008

and click search. You should end up with 47 results.