On goodbye to a friend
I received the sad news this morning that a good friend of mine, of ours, passed away near dawn. This is written in tears.
Mike Gorff, at a crucial point in my life, became my good friend. My father had recently passed away, and Mike, under the guise of a mentor/handyman, guided me to a better place to be. As a co-worker at Byers Engineering, or as a handyman at various spots, Mike was always there, ready with a suggestion, a joke, or helping hand. He could concoct a solution to a problem that would make McGyver blush, would spot a dollar in a pile of wood laying on the side of the road. He was one of the smartest people I’ve ever known, and surely one of the most decent.
As a boss, he guided me amid the briars of office politics with a steady hand- and he always had my back. He always had all our backs. It was who he was. Mike, in any given situation, had already out thought you, but always seemed genuinely interested in what you thought, and why. It made him a good manager, and a good friend.
In his other role as handyman, Mike kept me from freezing in that first lonely winter after my father passed. The furnace had died, and Mike was able to jury-rig a donated heater into my gas line, which allowed me to sleep without frost forming on my lips. He might literally have saved my life, I don’t know. He was ready at a moments notice with an offer of labor, the right tool, or a quicker, cheaper, “gonna last just as long as what they’ll sell ya for ten dollars down at Pep Boys”* answer to whatever question or calamity you might have.
As we grow older, we meet, by sheer longevity, more people. Some become friends, others merely names or acquaintances. But it seems we lose, almost totally by inertia, a few of those who have been the closest, or that we’ve known the longest. Although Mike and I haven’t spoken in years, I always had his number. I knew, no matter what, or whenever, Mike would be there if I called. I don’t want to forget that, or him.
Since the last time I spoke with Mike I, by sheer fluke, had occasion to work with his sister Candice at the CDC. Where Mike was reserved, Candice can make lightbulbs blink. But knowing them both, I can see a certain something akin in them. I am glad to have known both of them.
This comes in a week where an old friends mother, Audrey Lowe, also passed away. I played air guitar to Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Green River” with her son Whitney in their living room when I was in elementary school, and I learned nearly everything I know about the technical aspects of a guitar from her talented and lovely husband Wade. Audry, as an audiologist at the Veterans Hospital on Clairmont, watched over my father for a year and a half as he wasted away from AIDS upstairs from her office. She more than once helped me find him as he wandered lost about the hospital, and if you’ve ever been there, you know what that means. I am forever in her debt.
So overall, the point of all this? Hold those who deserve your attention close. Tell them, in some fashion, what they mean to you. Call them when you don’t hear from them for a few days.
But do something.
Because as Mike Gorff and Audrey Lowe taught me, it’s what we’re here for.
*Actual quote from Mike in my driveway, when he re-wired some errant engine part of a Ford pickup I had, using only the contents of my junk drawer and a dirty roll of electrical tape from the dash of his ancient brown pickup.
