My oldest friend passed away this weekend. He was all of 16 days younger than me, and dear in a way that boggles the mind of anyone who knew him.
I met Mike when we were in 5th grade. It was a tumultuous time in my life; my parents were teetering on the edge of divorce, we’d been dragged across state over Christmas break to a new home in a new town, and I had the misfortune of being a 10-year-old who really didn’t know how to communicate with kids my own age. For whatever reason, Mike just didn’t care about that last point.
He lived up the street and around the corner, and we had almost nothing in common. I loved reading and music; he preferred Sega and stalking neighborhood kids with toy guns. But this was also the year I got my own D&D books, so it wasn’t long before we found some common ground exploring dungeons and fighting monsters in my dad’s garage.
I admit we still didn’t have much in common by the end of my 8th-grade year, at which point my family relocated again. Little did I know that we’d run into each other nearly two years later in the halls of Dodge City High. He’d gotten a tad bit taller. Like, a foot or so. And I’d grown out my hair. But we still loved us some Dungeons & Dragons.
Mike always had a dark side. It turned out he’d moved out to Dodge to live with his grandparents, because his anger issues had boiled over and created an insurmountable rift with his stepmom. He always had a temper. When he joined the navy and disappeared for a few years, I remember hoping he had found some purpose that would give him peace, but fearing he’d find himself at the wrong end of too many fights.
Mike and I often hung out over the following years. He was part of our family – another son to my mom, another older brother to my brother. We had years of fun at the gaming table. When my ex-wife and I bought a house, he even rented the house next door. And later on, when I’d moved across state to start a new life in the wake of my divorce and he’d relocated to San Antonio, we eventually had the chance for regular gaming online.
Until, that is, he destroyed his laptop in a fit of rage when he couldn’t get the headphones to work right.
My friend Mike died of a heart attack. His second coronary in less than a year. He tried to reign it in, but his anger was always a bitter enemy, picking at his psyche like a fly that just won’d stop buzzing around your head. He was brilliant, though often brutish. He was electrically and mechanically inclined, always concocting ridiculous inventions and hyping up big plans for future innovations. But so many people knew him for his bad jokes and playfully mean streak. He was also a loyal friend, who fought his more selfish impulses to help my family out of a spot on more than one occasion.
Mike was kind of a jerk sometimes, but he was also a decent human being who truly deserved the peace and love he so often struggled to give himself. My wife and I loved him dearly, and we often concocted schemes to get him to move up and join us in Wichita. It never happened, but we loved to entertain the notion.
In the past year, we talked a lot. About life, health, family, dreams and ideals. He eventually replaced his computer and started gaming with us again, and I definitely wish we’d had more of that. He was a giant of a man with a heart that just couldn’t stay strong enough to support him; which seemed odd, given that it was so often strong enough to support me.
Mike was 44 years old, and he was my oldest friend.