Michael

My lifelong friend Michael shown here in the hospital in treatment for his cancer that eventually took him from us over a year and a half now. Here visiting with his doggie friend. I met Mike (that's what I always called him) when we were both about 12 and the friendship spanned almost half a century. Sometimes, it seemed we almost had a "psychic connection" with each other. I could wish nothing more for anyone than that they have or have had a buddy like Mike.

Mike had one of the kindest hearts I've known. Patience. He had oodles more patience than the person writing this post. It made him exceptional at his job fixing computers and computer networks, building about anything, training dogs, and being a good, loving, faithful friend. When we were young and built models, mine always looked sort of like the picture on the box, with a little glue dripping here and there, a few painted brush strokes showing through here and there. His always looked like miniatures of the actual car, plane, etc.

When we were in high school he had a motorcycle accident and was left a paraplegic. That never slowed Mike down and he never complained or felt sorry for himself. Once again unlike the present blogger. He exemplified a successful man's triumph over tremendous odds.

All any of us may ask for when we're gone is for someone to think about us from time to time and the impact we had on their life (hopefully in a good way: we can all work on that while we are still here).  I'm certain that his memory comes up in a lot of minds on numerous nights and days. I read somewhere recently, that contrary to previous scientific speculation, all snowflakes are not individually different. Maybe even a lot of people aren't, but then to every rule there are those special exceptions, and Mike was one of those.