A December to Remember…and Forget

Focusing in on the friend aspect, Mike was one of my longest and most coveted friendships. We met as he dated and later married a friend of mine. Alas when that relationship did not work out, Mike moved into the basement of my house with me and my first wife. Our closeness was certainly put to the test upon living with each other for several months. But as he was able to transition through that difficult time, we were there for him and that only intensified our bond. Now don’t get me wrong, Mike and I did not sit around discussing great literary works or plan out the logistics of how to solve social decay. Most of our general conversations over the years were on par with an episode of Beavis and Butthead. And to be blunt, we did enjoy quite a few episodes of that show together.

Stealing from Pink Floyd: the bricks in our wall were sports, music and pop culture. Mike was a dedicated and supportive St Louis Cardinals fan along with the St Louis Blues (hockey) and the Los Angeles Lakers (basketball). He was also an invested fan in the ST LOUIS RAMS…not to be confused with that franchise that exists in Los Angeles now. Mike liked his sports. He would also casually follow the college teams of the St Louis Billikens and Missouri Tigers in their respective sports as well, but those first three were his main passion. Mike was almost like an older brother to me. He was two years my senior and liked to torment and tease in the way an older sibling would a younger brother. We both liked the Blues and since Michael Jordan stopped playing professional basketball, I haven’t really followed the NBA too much aside from a short stint on the Boston Celtics bandwagon. Seeing as how the baseball season lasts the longest, that was where the torment was most concentrated. He was a lifelong St Louis Cardinals (baseball) fan and I’ve been a fan of the Cleveland Indians (now Guardians) since the early 1990’s…right about the time we became friends. Anyone who knows a thing or two about baseball, knows the Cardinals have been pretty successful over the years…and the Cleveland team not so much. During the lean years he would sarcastically taunt me on how almost mediocre they could be. But after the three failed World Series tries by Cleveland…he still twisted the knife. But that was a two-way street as I would do the same for him when the Cardinals or Lakers failed to be their best.

In the first decade of our friendship, we were both avid followers of televised sports entertainment programs aka Wrestling. Mike was excellent at mimicking the cadence and voice patterns of certain wrestlers. Also in that first ten years or so, we would engage each other in fierce video game battles of hockey and basketball. We didn’t keep a rolling tally, but I imagine he led the respective series for each sport. Our weekly or bi-weekly get togethers for years consisted of watching two to three hours of the Monday and Thursday wrestling offerings followed by either video game basketball or hockey. The format for the PS2 and later PS3 competitions was two games. The first game was me as one team and him as the other. Then once that was completed, we would switch teams and play again. That way no one could say they got to play the superior team exclusively. But Mike was so stinking smart…and stinky too after Taco Bell or nachos or just about anything he consumed; a good majority of the time, he would win with the ‘superior’ team and then take the team I lost with (sometimes handily) and find a way to win or at least make it super competitive until the closing seconds.

To anyone who spent more than five minutes with Mike would tell you how smart he was. That was the takeaway from meeting Mike: He was smart and very funny. Mike was clever and quick-witted. Once he felt comfortable around you, he would let you see a tiny sliver of what his mind was capable of humor-wise. There were many who got to see this side of him, but few were able to appreciate the depths of his mirth. Depths probably is not the right word per se, but he was so quick to associate and spin a response crafted with threads of wrestling, pop culture or poop humor.

Mike was very close with his mom (passed away), brother (passed away) and his dad. Queue the friend of thirty years. Aside from those long-standing relationships, we were in each other’s lives almost daily since the early 1990’s. As most relationships go when families are started, our daily and weekly routines tapered off into occasional, infrequent visits. But even with Mike moving farther away and beginning his path into fatherhood, we still messaged each other several times a day. It was unusual for us to go more than a few days without interacting unless one of us was in a geographical location with no cell service. In this age of electronic messaging with less and less phone conversations, I still have the ability to go back and read our conversations.

To an outsider those conversations might seem like complete gibberish, but to us those were our nonstop memes to each other or barbs about how poor our team performed that day. This was following a steady stream of nonsense with quotes from the movie Mean Girls or Step Brothers or some horror film we just watched. We also liked to keep the other up to date on our favorite musical artists and their released albums or upcoming tour dates. Quite a bit of our conversations were filled with inappropriate comments or inside jokes that would be pointless to explain to someone who was not in our brains for half of our lives. Our last coherent exchange took place on December 10^th at 8:57am … and I use the term coherent loosely as it applied to our private chat highway.

I miss Mike. I miss him an immeasurable amount. On a daily basis there are a handful of things that occur and my first instinct is: I need to say something to Mike. A few days before the above noted last exchange, Mike sent me a text on December 8^th stating that he was in the hospital as he had been admitted the day before (on the 7^th). His message stated that Covid was kicking his ass and he expected to be there for two weeks. Did I mention he was smart? Two weeks after he was admitted, he passed. I was able to be there for his final two days and able to say a final goodbye (about an hour before he passed). To borrow from his wife Jessica, it just didn’t seem real and still doesn’t. Like one of those long weekends when Mike would be at his dad’s place (where cell service was almost non-existent), I keep waiting for him to come back into our service area so we can catch up.

We shared memories in the 1990’s, the 2000’s, the 2010’s and the beginning of the 2020’s. At one difficult time in his life, he lived in my basement. At a difficult time in my life, I lived in his basement. We shared laughs, love, heartbreak, celebration, loss and him finding love with Jess and their creating a son. All through the years, he was my friend and one of my pillars of sanity. I’m overcome with emotions on a daily basis with his absence. I know above my selfishness at missing what he meant to me, he will be dearly missed by his dad, his wife and his young son. His friends and extended family have also shared their shock and sadness at his passing on Facebook. I could say a million more things about how great it was having Mike in my life, but none of it will bring him back and that crushes something inside of me. I feel amazingly guilty for not writing this sooner or being able to rewind the clock and somehow make this not be reality. This is a rough way to finish the year and start a new one.

Peace.  <<12-11-2021>>

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