I can’t tell you how difficult it was for me on Monday to pick up the phone and call David Marsland, the Greene man who lost his wife in Friday’s tragic shooting in Binghamton. Calling someone I didn’t know to ask them highly personal questions about a loved one who had just been killed so senselessly so soon after its occurrence felt like an invasion of the worst kind. I wasn’t sure how my call would be received.

But after speaking with David at length on Tuesday, I can say that no matter how difficult it was for me, I’m glad I made the call. Because if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t otherwise have had the opportunity to not just put a face, but a person, with Hong Xiu’s name.

David is obviously grieving for his wife, to whom he had been married for less than a year. He was so incredibly open with me during both our first phone conversation and our subsequent interview, which took place at a table in Bonnie’s on Genesee Street in Greene.

For nearly three hours, we sat and talked. (We being the two of us and David’s long-time friend Sawyer who had driven up from Lynchburg, VA to be his “guardian angel.”) OK, mostly he talked and I listened.

During the time we spoke, he fielded phone calls from basically all over the world. First came a call from Hong Xiu’s brother from China. Speaking through a translator from the Chinese consulate, the two tried to organize travel plans so that he could attend Thursday’s funeral service. Another was from a friend from the Pal Yul retreat center, where he and Hong Xiu were married, who lives in Nova Scotia.