Trying To Remember The Good Times
Grief is the price you pay for love
The first-floor venue for Mike’s funeral at the North Bondi Surf Life Saving Club was perfect. Ironic, given the name, but perfect. His wicker coffin rested in front of a massive picture window overlooking the iconic beach where the sun set on surfers and children playing in the waves Mike had loved so much. Everything he loved was there, good company, funny stories, tender truths.
The only problem was that the venue had been designed for the living which meant getting his coffin down to the hearse at the end of the service proved tricky. The elevator was too small. The traffic at the main entrance too busy. The only way out was to manoeuvre the coffin down a narrow, twisting staircase similar to the one in an iconic scene from Friends, the one where Ross, Rachel and Chandler try to carry a sofa up to their apartment.
The amateur family pallbearers were enthusiastic, but quickly got stuck as they tried to lift the coffin over the banister. Wedged in, unable to move forward or backwards. Unwilling to upend the coffin we froze, holding our collective breaths as the horror of our predicament sank in. Then someone yelled, “Pivot!” and suddenly we were all shouting it, laughing so hard that there was a serious risk that the coffin would be dropped, and the body roll out. “Pivot! Pivot! Pivot!” echoed down the staircase as we finally made it out.
Meanwhile the congregation — over 120 people — stood solemnly around the hearse, their phone torches lighting our way. The mood was sombre. All eyes turned to me, the grieving widow, tears rolling down my cheeks …except they were tears of laughter. I couldn’t recover myself and the moment of my final goodbye to my lover of 32 years had me shaking with uncontrollable mirth. It was wildly inappropriate.
Or was it?
Mike would have loved it.
The last six months of Mike’s life were unimaginably awful. His mental health imploded and he believed he had lost everything he loved. I tried to hold on, to get him help, but I also disintegrated, slowly coming to the sickening realisation that he wasn’t just overtired or overstressed. He had fallen, and then been pushed, down a rabbit hole with no way back. The enormity of it all and the devastation of losing my best friend has left little time or inclination to reflect on the good times.
My grief counselor didn’t want to hear about the end-of-life mess. She wanted to focus on the early days and the Mike I fell in love with. She was right. The reason we feel grief is because we have known love and I need to rediscover that love. After seven months I am so tired of writing about grief and sadness. I want to remember happy times and bring some joy back to life.
We laughed so hard over the years, with countless adventures and incredible friends. It was always Mike at the centre of it all, fuelled by unending energy, boundless curiosity and generous spirit. People would meet him once and remember him forever. He could never sit still, always searching to see what was around the next corner or over the next mountain.
Yes, we got into scrapes, it was part of the thrill. A big reason I fell in love with Mike was that after a childhood in a house where nothing stirred, where on Saturday afternoons I had to sit in silence while my stepfather snored, sprawled for his nap in the middle of the living room, I was terrified of being bored. With Mike, I never knew what was going to happen next. It was exhilarating, even when it was terrifying.
An early holiday was spent skiing with his family — Austrian refugees who all skied with native ability. We were on the slopes in Big Sky, Montana where a sign told us a new lift opened that day to the longest vertical drop in North America.
“It is a double black diamond,” advised the lift attendant on the way up. “You need to be able to ski well to do this run.” I was a beginner. “You’re the first Europeans we’ve had up here,” he added.
“Wow!” Mike said, green eyes sparkling, “You’ll be the first European to ski the longest vertical drop in North America. You can’t miss that opportunity. It’ll be fine, just follow me”. The first European to ‘ski’ the longest vertical run in North America did so on her belly, face first, rocks flying past her head, in floods of tears.
But by the end of the day we were sitting in a hot spring all to ourselves under a huge sky full of stars, before heading off to the local cowboy bar where we were the only two foreigners making friends and dancing with the locals. It was magical. The adrenaline was magical. The faith in me, was magical.
I never did learn to say no when Mike said, “It’ll be fine. Follow me.”
At the other end of the spectrum, we spent time every year at Plum Village, Thich Naht Hahn’s Buddhist retreat in Western France. One year the Vietnamese nuns set up a fiercely competitive ‘nuns vs kids’ football match. The nuns took no prisoners. The game came down to a last-minute penalty kick from the diminutive Sister Lotus Flower, who ruthlessly drilled the ball past the hapless 7-year-old goalie. Mike had been given a Tannoy and the job of commentating, keeping the entire village in hysterics with his running banter.
Our Favourite Daughter, very much a chip off the old block, was age about five at the time. The next morning, she was happily chatting away during breakfast in the big main dining hall. I gently reminded her that breakfast at Plum Village was meant to be a mindful, silent affair. She glanced around at the fifty mindful Buddhists eating in perfect silence, then, with a mischievous glint in those sparkling green eyes, belted out at the top of her voice “I know a song that will get on your nerves, get on your nerves, get on your nerves…”
Like his daughter, Mike had an incredible ability to make even the most dour person crack up. He bought out the best in people. It was rare that we came across anyone who could suck all that energy and generosity from him with nothing in return. Ninety-nine percent of the time Mike’s generosity and curiosity were met with exponential reciprocity. Until he met that 1%.
Mike’s legacy is not just in the chaos he left behind but in the way he lived — with boundless energy, humour, and love. It’s in the stories we tell, the laughter we share, and the memories that will outlast the grief. He made life an adventure, and even now I find myself following him down the mountain trusting that somehow it’ll be fine.
