From Zoe Yarborough

Just four months ago, I was spending a lazy spring week in Arizona rehearsing with my dad for the most epic father-daughter dance of all time. 

Some of y’all may not know that it was actually HIS idea have the DJ fake everyone out with thirty seconds of a slow waltz before breaking out into a choreographed Zumba-style dance to P!nk’s 2001 smash hit single “Get The Party Started.”

My dad leaned into the unexpected and uncomfortable. And he helped others do the same. And he definitely knew how to get the party started.

I can’t think of many people who accomplished successful careers building steel plants around the world AND leading the USA Olympic Canoe and Kayak teams through two summer games. Not to mention the novel, stage play, and travel blog he wrote in recent years. This unabashed willingness to follow his heart, to just do the damn thing, and to prune things that aren’t serving him … these are brave qualities that he’s inspired in many of us I see here tonight.

My dad loved a story and tended toward verbosity. You’d ask him what time it is, and he’d start explaining how to make a watch. 

For David, everything was the best. The most delicious. The most wonderful. But it was so sincere. You couldn’t help but be excited along with him. A tendency toward hyperbole and zest for life? The apple does not fall far. 

When Eli and I were little, my dad used to tell us to visualize what we wanted to happen in our lives. The shot we wanted to make on the tennis court or the soccer field, the answer on the test we were taking, or the type of person we wanted to become as humans. A little … out there … for eight-year-old me, but I’ve leaned on this so much as I have gotten older. 

This week, I’ve used this tool — as painful as painting these vivid memories can be — to remember my dad in some specific and splendid settings.

I picture him happy as a clam when the ski boots come off, and he unwraps the giant chocolate chip cookie at the slope-side ski lodge.

I picture the way he spoke so adoringly and proudly to and about his parents who loved him just as he was, and how he’s emulated that love with my mom, Allie, and that acceptance toward Eli and me as we zigzag through life.

I picture the two-decades-long patience he endured and eventually delighted in while my mom was SO sure she didn’t need a marriage certificate to prove their unconventional yet unflappable love.

I picture the nightly kiss he gives my mom as she retires to bed three or four hours before he does. 

I picture the unbridled happiness and certainty he shared with me regarding my marriage to my best friend and soul mate, Matthew.

I picture him humming along to his current favorite song as he writes at his desk.

I picture Eli and him getting super riled up at some “absolutely horrible call” against the Panthers, probably. 

I visualize him sipping the perfect gin and tonic at some trendy cocktail bar. That is … AFTER schooling the career bartender on what makes the perfect g&t.

I visualize the way he dressed sharply in jeans and a sports coat for every flight and fastidiously tucked all of our passports in his jacket pocket. So proud of his little clan of four. 

I visualize his smile as I descend the escalator to CLT’s baggage claim. He always parked and came inside because he just couldn’t wait to see me and help me with my bags.

In my twenties, as I navigated the world alone and with friends, he helped me (and a lot of my best friends here) through innumerable panicked phone calls when flights were canceled in unfamiliar cities, or connections would definitely be missed. Not ten minutes after these calls, there’d be a plan b, c, d, and e in a text, email, Google doc, and delivered by carrier pigeon. Complete with the available airline pilots’ full names, years on the job, and social security numbers.

But there was one time when I was in a HUGE pickle at the gate, and he was all out of ideas for me. He calmly said, “Honey, I think your best bet here is just to cry and be as pitiful as you can be to the gate agent.”

David never took life too seriously. Nothing was out of bounds when it came to nurturing our little imaginations. He loved people’s eccentricities. He never judged.

And he’d want us to lean into all of these happy memories rather than mourn the absence of future ones.

I cannot thank every single one of you enough for being here and for supporting us over the next days, weeks, months, and years.

The most devastating part of a death like this in the middle. He left us in the middle of an errand. In the middle of a book. In the middle of planning the next adventure. In the middle of a bottle of wine. In the middle of a piece he was writing. In the middle of a sudoku puzzle. In the middle of, I assumed, his life. 

But my dad never assumed we’d be given anything or took any of the things around him for granted. He only gave the world what he wanted back from it. 

So say all the I love yous. Book the trip. Make the phone call you’ve been putting off. Open the nice bottle collecting dust. Write about something that’s been tugging on your heartstrings. And live the dang life you want, asking along the way, “What would David do?”