In my early 20s, I used to go see this lady who was a psychic, she read a regular deck of playing cards and could hear angels/spirits talking to her in interpreting the cards.  It was interesting to me as I was fascinated with the occult back then, even went as far as declaring myself a Wiccan.  I guess it isn’t uncommon at that age to go on a journey of self discovery and to find oneself.   What do I  believe in and where do I belong….how do I ultimately fit into this world?  The psychic lady would record our sessions on cassette tapes and I still have some of them.  One of the things I remember her saying so clearly was that the name Michael will mean something to me….. as if it would spark a recognition of the significance of that name.  I had a neighborhood friend named Michael and for years just assumed she must mean him.  That could very well be the case as our friendship is complicated.

For years I would remember that message the psychic gave me whenever I encounter someone whose name was Michael.  Last week I found out that a guy from my old job over a decade ago who I would consider a friend had passed away.  His name was also Michael.  I was really shocked by this as I had just thought about him weeks ago when I was working on some wood projects and struggled to make sense of how I wanted it done.  I thought about how it’s too bad Michael had moved away so many years ago because he was always so handy and creative.  He would surely help me figure out how to build stuff with wood.  I remember when I was starting my ceiling mural business and had tried to come up with a way to construct a portable break apart and easy to assemble showroom and he really gave it some thought.  I think it got his creative mind working, like a good challenge from the normal maintenance stuff.  One day he came into work to tell me while he was at a concert the night before, he had seen the stage hands put snap together framing for a canvas piece they painted for a backdrop that may work for what I had in mind.  To this day I still think about that idea but I’ve been on hiatus from ceiling work in a few years for health reasons.  It’s too bad I hadn’t talked to him in years, that’s typically what happens when you leave a job and the friends you made whom you saw every single day M-F will suddenly disappear, you lose touch with each other through circumstance.

That was my last job where I worked for someone else.  It never agreed with me as I hopped from job to job being dissatisfied with office work and office politics and dealing with ass-kissing bullshit.  There are a lot of incompetence in the work place yet so much brown nosing going on, it’s about who you know and not your job performance that gets you the breaks.  That’s just not who I am and I’m very quick to call bullshit on fakeness. I’m not interested in getting anything without earning it by my own merits.  And I definitely didn’t like being pigeon holed to “that’s how we’ve always done it, that’s policy” even if the policy sucks and it’s the most inefficient way of doing things. I like thinking in terms of efficiency, innovation, progress.  To me LIFE exists only through adaptation and progress.  When things cease to move onward, it dies.  Can I say bullshit a third times in one paragraph??  haha I just did.

I honestly don’t remember the first time meeting Michael at work.  With some people I can pinpoint the exact moment our paths crossed.  With Michael, I’m not sure, he just was there.  I don’t know his official title but I want to say he was our facility maintenance manager so he didn’t report to anyone other than the head boss for our building.  This by the way was for a bank processing center with different departments but I won’t say which bank.  He was basically on the same corporate level as other managers in other departments so he never could get in trouble for stopping by to shoot the shit with me for a half hour or more every single morning.  I, on the other hand, would get dirty looks and a talking to even though I was doing my work when he stopped by to chat.  Every morning like clockwork, Michael would swing by with his coffee and at my lunch break, he would show up and we’d talk about life and people and our observations of the people in life.  What can I say, I love thinking and talking about life and the motivations behind why people do what they do.  We quickly became good friends as I felt like we saw the world in similar ways and had very little tolerance for stupidity and incompetence around us.  We were both capable people and couldn’t fathom why others aren’t that way, why did people act like idiots?  We didn’t always agree on whatever topic of discussion but our time getting to know each other was filled with intellectually stimulating accounts of life.  Similar religious early schooling and impressions of that left us rebellious, we actually had a mutual friend, my current life and his childhood life, what a small world, maybe I was just suppose to reconnect them, who knows.  He would tell me tales of the battles he had with his neighbors, and his fondness for his dogs, I want to say they were Rottweilers.  Oh!!  And the delicious crabs he would get take out from Seaside Restaurant….and he would get wings from the Wings to go, haha I’m surprise I still remember that!  We of course talked a lot about work as most people have grievances in the workplace and you find commonality in these viewpoints.  When I quit, I had told him the work day prior so he was anticipating it and looked forward to reading my big F.U. resignation letter.  I remember talking to him after I left, he said he didn’t expect anything less than guns ablazin’ with me as though he was really proud and definitely approved. haha but I burned a lot of bridges that day.  Me and corporate world doesn’t mingle well, I’m an artist at heart.

Here’s the thing, Michael was very outspoken and opinionated.  He didn’t take shit from anyone and looked the part with all his tattoos and piercings, his outer appearance would intimidate most people and I think he got off on that as he didn’t really want to be bothered with other people’s bullshit (that’s 4!).  People at work knew they didn’t want to piss him off and he would quickly say shit and call people out, even other managers.  The thing is that despite his aggressive demeanor, he was a competent employee that got shit done and didn’t make excuses on why it wasn’t done, things were just done.  He could practically fix anything and I remember him saying tinkering with stuff when he was young was how he learned to fix stuff and figure out how things worked mechanically.  It may have started off as a necessity to learn how to fix stuff but it’s a life skill everyone should have on some degree.  I think he even looked at my car when it was having issues.  I took a tip from him on using the smaller thinner rollers to paint because you get more control and less splattering, all true.  Since then I would only paint with those rollers instead of the standard size that ends up making you fatigued faster because of the weight on them loaded with paint.  It’s way less messy too. Trust me, I have no problems leaving my ego at the door as I’m always looking for ways to be more proficient so tell me what would work better than how I’m doing it and I’ll give it a try and see for myself.  I also like tinkering with stuff and can figure out a fix for most things, even if it’s a creative fix if my mechanical skills aren’t up to par.

Another thing we had in common was music, we both love Rock music and some of the same bands so maybe that’s how we first got connected as I find music is typically how I relate to some of the most impactful people in my life.  When I heard of his passing, I was shocked and quickly thought, “OMG, he didn’t even make it to the new TOOL album release at the end of this month!!!!”  But I suspect that on the spirit plane, he can get access to anything he wants in an instant, as well as get an impression of how things are with people still living.  I don’t know for sure, no one that’s alive really know for sure until they pass on.  I probably think about death way more than the average person.  It isn’t so much I’m afraid of death but it’s more of a curiosity of what it’s like beyond this life, not that I’m ready to go anytime soon.  I have a lot left to do here.  I’ve had to deal with death of family members from a very early age and have gone through the grief process many times.  I wish I had known he was sick and had an opportunity to talk with him….even if it was just to say thanks for crossing paths with me all those years ago and that I was glad to know him just as he was.

This past week I’ve thought about Michael a lot, thinking about his life, the impact he’d made to those people closest to him and what losing him will do to the rest of their lives.  And the impressions he’s left on people like me that came and went within a 3 year’s time when we happen to work at the same job, what lessons he had to learn in this lifetime and whether he had learned them while he was here.  What was his state of mind and how was he dealing with it psychologically?  I thought about how he chose the things in his life as that’s all any of us have are choices.  We choose what we want and where we want to go and deal with whatever the outcome of those choices bring us.  It isn’t necessarily right or wrong choices, they are just directives towards some destination.  Even if stuff “happens” to us, we have a choice in how we process and deal with the event.  His wife had posted on his facebook page how he had died from a long battle with lung cancer so I suspect he’s known for some time, I wonder what was going through his mind and emotions he was feeling especially the last few weeks leading up to the end.  Was he scared?  Was he sad to leave the people he loved behind?  Was he in pain and ready to go?

Today was a memorial service for Michael.  I had thought about going but ultimately decided to remain home as I can remember him in my own way, grief really is an individual thing. It isn’t so much that I needed to show up as he’s already dead, how would he know or even care if I’m there or not?  He doesn’t.  And these services are really for the living as a way to mourn and cope and finding some kind of closure while supporting one another.  I don’t really know anyone else in his family, just him.   We hadn’t talked in probably a decade but I’m still sad his life here has ended.  He made an impression on me and he was someone that if he liked you, he would always have your back.  He wasn’t fake, a bit raw and rough around the edges but definitely honest and blunt.  That’s just how I am so I admire those same qualities in others.  To me, friendship is about quality, not quantity.  I’m not looking to get superficial with as many people as I can, I just want to get deep with a handful of people and call it good 🙂  Besides if his spirit was there witnessing everyone who attended, he could surely sense for a moment that I’d been thinking of him all week long and knowing him, he’s good with that.

Farewell Michael, thanks for being my friend.  *imaginary toasting with a glass of Jack & Coke* <~~~ his drink of choice 😀