I met Mike back in 1985 at one the many forgetful places of employment I have had. We both worked the night shift along with a cast of other characters like I have never seen since. When I met Mike he had been sober for a couple of years after many years of some dedicated hardcore drinking. Mike was kind of like an angel flying too close to the ground which means there are going to be incidents. One such incident was where he had been in a relationship with a woman that racked up over 20 thousand dollars on credit cards with his name. She disappeared and he was left having to deal with the financial mess. Needless to say, he wasn’t saying too many nice things about women after that. From what I know he had several less than successful relationships with women.
Mike was the guy that got me interested in playing golf. He was always trying to get me to go play some golf with him and a few of the guys on the night shift. I finally said yes and started playing golf. Over the next few years I think we played maybe 20 rounds together. We would show up at various courses after the night shift. It was quite the sight to see four 3rd shift guys showing up at 5:30 at the first tee drinking beer with every third word being the f-word. Mike smoked about 3 packs a day, Benson & Hedges if I remember correctly, so add that to the scene at the first tee. Mike was pretty good at golf; I on the other hand was just simply horrible. He did eventually teach me a few things that did help out. He was like many guys playing golf, he would get very upset at some of his shots. I remember one time playing at Hiawatha where he was not having a good round. Not sure which hole we were on, but Mike had enough of his poor outing and with a barrage of "f" this and "f" that he tossed all of his clubs into a pond and walked off the course. We were all laughing so hard we didn’t even try to get him back or retrieve his clubs! I don’t know for sure, but I don’t think he ever played golf again!
Like many times in life things changed and I moved on to another forgetful place of employment, so I no longer work with Mike. The few years after we worked together we got out and did some fishing and had some long conversations about work and what not. I asked him about the golf club incident and he said he didn’t regret it at all which made me laugh. As the years went on Mike got more and more depressed about work and life. I tried to be a voice of encouragement to him, but I didn’t’ see where I was too successful. Eventually we started to lose contact with each other which happens more often than it should. I would hear about him through other friends that he was drinking again and not going in a good direction. The last conversation I had with him I could tell he had been drinking; he wanted me to go fishing with him, I gave him some excuse that I couldn’t, that was the last time I spoke with Mike.
It was some time after this that I heard the news that Mike hung himself in his garage. I heard this when I was at work; I remember basically doing nothing the rest of that day. I couldn’t get the image of Mike hanging in his garage out of my mind and the words of Aldous Huxley “Slowly, very slowly, like two unhurried compass needles, the feet turned towards the right; north, north-east, east, south-east, south, south-south-west; then paused, and, after a few seconds, turned as unhurriedly back towards the left. South-south-west, south, south-east, east. …”
The life he took came from no storybook and the snapping of his neck just blended in with the day. How sad is that! Mike didn’t have a glimmer of hope that prevented him from the decision to take his life. I regret not being a better friend to help provide that glimmer of hope to someone who desperately needed it. Are there people in your life similar to Mike? In 2011 here’s to being a glimmer of hope in the lives of angel’s flying too close to the ground
Very sobering.
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