Waiting for the End of the World

It’s been an inward weekend. On Saturday I met up with Deano, who redeyed in from San Francisco, and we drove up to join a small grieving group of Mike Wolf‘s friends at Mike’s place up in Stamford. Since we orbit for the most part in the blogosphere, we’re unaccustomed as a group to sharing real-time emotion. Mike’s parents flew in from Georgia to deal with his belongings, and they were kind and open, laid bare by the sad sudden events of the week.

We’ve been sharing our memories in the Comments to the last entry in Mike’s blog, Randomness Personified, and rather than try to find new words I’ll quote back what I wrote in there today:

It was a pleasure, if a sad one, to meet Mike’s parents in Stamford on Saturday. We arrived as the last of the apartment was being carted away to the Salvation Army, and the empty space was very strange without his glee in it. I had only been there once before, for the Christmas party, and seeing the bare walls and empty floor kick-started the healing kind of grief. We were all bewildered together, which felt right.

Mike’s Dad instigated some mid-day beer drinking, and we told some stories and looked at the walls and cried a bit. It made it clear that he was gone. It also gave a glimpse of the warmth and the love he leaves behind in the people he touched. His folks were great, direct and generous. Mike spent his life being loved as well as loving others, and it was good to understand how kind his family is.

Overall the day made me feel better about moving on: you don’t ever understand something like this, but it becomes part of you.

I’ve known Mike for something close to a decade, and only met him in person a few months back. Like most who knew him, I liked him immensely, and since I’ve been kind of busy since about 1997 I figured we’d have time to hang and delve deeper sometime down the line. I think he figured the same. The last email I had from him came right after my entry here on not getting into the Yale School of Drama.

Hey, I just wanted to drop a note of congrats on the Yale attempt.
Color me seriously impressed. I have no acting chops and really wish
that I could. [ ... snip ... ]

So, anyhow, you got great experience and some young nipple viewing
out of the day. Well done! Try again next time and I’ll drive up and
we’ll grab some of New Haven’s disturbingly good pizza.

But time is a mocker, and sometimes there isn’t much of it at all. I was wrong about the future, and it’s a truth that bears some lifting.

Jedi Mike photo by Mike’s friend and co-worker Jonathan Perregaux, used by permission.