Premature talk of exaggerated death

David Verdin understands grief because even though he is only 31 years old it is something he has experienced more than once.

He has lost good friends, and when he was only 20, his father was killed by a drunk driver in Germany, on the Autobahn.

But a few weeks ago he got to see grief from the other side, kind of. It’s probably happened before, here in the bayou country where there aren’t all that many different surnames in the telephone book. And it is likely to happen in the future.

David hopes it is not something that will happen again anytime soon.

He works as a server at Copeland’s, and before that worked as a truck driver, barkeep, and held several other positions.

Working at the restaurant, he says, makes him twice the money in half the number of hours earned when he was a truck driver, so it’s all fine with him.

David takes his job seriously, which is why he doesn’t answer his phone when working, even if it is blowing up with vibrations in his pocket, which it was on this one afternoon.

It all started when his grandmother, Joyce Gros, got a call in her Schriever home from an old family friend named Beverly McDonald, and what Miss Beverly had to say was enough for Miss Joyce to darned near pass out.

Miss Beverly, who lives in Chacahoula, had heard about the obituary for 31-year-old David Verdin, who had died of an aneurism. She knew how much Miss Joyce loved her grandson, and she wanted to waste no time offering condolences.

This was news to Miss Joyce, who was shocked beyond belief and immediately called David’s mother, Tammie Pitre, who also lives in Schriever, and asked what was going on.

Miss Tammie didn’t have a clue but was determined to find out what this was about her son and death and an aneurism and she immediately called her daughter, Tiffany Verdin, full of tears and not knowing what she should do next.

But Miss Tiffany is a take-charge kind of gal and she vowed to get to the bottom of it all, whatever it was, and told Mom to stand by while she investigated.

Several people in the family at this point had called David’s phone, but he was busy serving steaks and tomato basil chicken and so, as stated before, he did not dare answer the incessantly vibrating communications device.

Receiving no answer from David, Tiffany kept her cool and called David’s room-mate, Ronnie Williams, who said so far as he knew David was alive and well and had gone to work.

Ronnie had smelled David’s cologne in the living room just a little while before, which told him there should nothing much to fear.

But you never know and so he told her the best thing to do was called the restaurant.

Following house rules, and not knowing what all the fuss was about, the hostess said she could not confirm whether David was at work, but Tiffany was insistent and so David was contacted.

The whole time his phone was blowing up David was convinced it was an omen, that someone had died, and he kept wondering who.

“It wasn’t till I talked to my sister that I realized it was me,” David said.

So Tiffany called Miss Tammie who called Miss Joyce and everyone else called everyone else till everyone knew pretty much that David Verdin who works at Copeland’s was indeed doing just that, and had not had an aneurism and so had not died.

And everyone said a prayer for this other David Verdin, the one they didn’t know, because Lord only knew what his family was going through and all of them – including David – has a soft spot for the kin of this other David Verdin to this day.

And just to make it all official, David put a mention of it on his Facebook just to make sure everyone knew.

“I don’t know what being dead feels like,” David later said. “But being alive is a pretty good thing. I know I’m not ready to go yet for sure.”

David, unlike Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer, did not get to hear all the wonderful things people say about you after you’re gone.

But like their creator, Mark Twain, he is now one of the few people to be able to say reports of his death are greatly exaggerated.