I sat on the hotel bathroom floor at zero dark o’clock, distracting myself from my misery by watching Meghan and Harry’s wedding on my iPhone. Oh. Look. Oprah is there, I thought, as my stomach clenched again.
Yes. That Meghan and Harry. Lucky for me, their royal wedding was streaming right around the same time as the aftermath of trying to keep up with my brother-in-law, Mike, at the hotel bar.
This was a mistake. Keeping up with Mike, not the wedding.
I was suffering quietly, trying not to wake Chris, who was sleeping just fine after what could only be described as a many-hour-long cocktail hour. I was suffering on my own.
We were in D.C. for our nephew’s wedding, which would happen later that day and would require stomach meds, strategic hydration, and, if we are being honest, a small hair of the dog drink before heading to the venue. I like to pretend this is a medical protocol.
I never tried to hold my own at the bar with Mike again.
Not because I learned my lesson, though I absolutely did, but because Mike died yesterday. He was 65. Youngish. Pancreatic cancer.
It runs on my mother-in-law’s side of the family. She died from it in 2013. And if you have been reading my nonsense for a while, you know my husband, Prince Chris, has a cyst on his pancreas that is being closely monitored. If it ever decides to go rogue, he will need something called a Whipple procedure.
I will let you Google that. I am not here to ruin your day.
Yes, Mike drank. A lot. He ate like fried food was sitting proudly at the top of the food pyramid. He smoked. Mike always said he never expected to live long, so he might as well enjoy his life while he was here.
And he did.
I first met Mike in July of 2005, when I was newly engaged to Chris. Mike had flown from his home in Atlanta to Fort Myers so we could all drive together to Port St. Lucie and surprise their mom for her 70th birthday. All five kids showed up that weekend.
On the drive over, we had a Billy Joel CD blasting, windows down, everyone singing at full volume like we were auditioning for nothing and no one. Chris told the story of how he once had Only the Good Die Young as his outgoing voicemail message.
Their mom was not pleased.
She found out when she called Chris and heard it for herself. She was very Catholic. The kind of Catholic who does not appreciate irony, humor, or Billy Joel commentary on mortality.
Mike laughed the loudest.
That was Mike. Loud. Present. Fully in it. The kind of person who lived the way he lived, consequences and cholesterol be damned.
Last night, after we found out Mike had passed away, we toasted him with scotch. And then toasted him again. And possibly once more for good measure. Grief math is not precise.
Which is why I found myself at 4 a.m., sitting upright in bed, scrolling my phone, trying to will acid reflux not to climb my esophagus like it had somewhere important to be. As I looked at Mike’s Facebook page, it hit me how strange life is. One minute you are laughing at bad decisions made at a hotel bar, and the next you are tallying genetics and medical scans.
Mike did not pretend life was safe. He did not hedge. He showed up as himself and lived loudly, even if that volume came with a cost.
My father-in-law, Chris, and Mike at the Naperville BBQ competition
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