RIP Mikey O'Brien
Jul. 5th, 2012 10:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stephbgToday I attended the memorial service for my friend Mikey O'Brien who was cruelly taken by cancer last week at the age of 42.
I have found myself unable to write about this sad event until now, but the experience of the memorial service and sharing of so many wonderful memories by so many people has allowed me to finally face this. Mikey's death was no surprise--he had been fighting a particularly nasty form of brain cancer for nearly three years--but the actual end was a shock I am still trying to process. Again.
When I first encountered Mikey in the late 80's he was MOB, a curly-haired wild child far deeper into the Perth music and alternative scenes than I was ever prepared to go. Despite the wild child tag I'm pretty sure I remember him being well thought of. Yes, my memories of him from that period are vague and I'll not try to dress them up. Our circles overlapped, and we were at many of the same parties, but that was about all.
It wasn't until many years later that I saw him at a Swancon masquerade sporting those amazing dreadlocks that we connected properly. It might have been a subsequent Swancon where we actually talked properly about sound and theatre and costumes, which must have been after he started going out with his bride-to-be Bec, my friend since university days. Bec was in the same circles as I, but she and Mikey had managed to overlap properly, rather to a lot of people's surprise. Before I spent time with them both I was mystified how those two would work together as a couple, but oh how well it worked. I was not alone in my mystification, nor was I alone in seeing how well their relationship worked.
Given the chance to get to know him then and in the post-dreadlock phase their relationship made perfect sense, and it was a privilege to discover what a lovely, kind, intelligent, funny, curious, thoughtful, and mischievous person this bad boy actually was. He gave *great* hugs. I didn't get to find this out about Mikey until after I'd lost my brother to cancer, and I thought it an enormous shame that I'd never had the chance to bring these two similarly wonderful men together. And then Mikey was diagnosed with the same kind of cancer that had killed my brother.
Well fuck.
Increasingly house-bound by my own illness I was unable to visit Mikey as often as I would have liked, particularly once I discovered how well he responded to scalp massage and generally being treated like a cat. I so wanted to be there. He was so easy to talk to, our earlier mismatch in hobbies being more than replaced by common interests in science fiction, food, psychology ("Jung!" "Freud!" "Jung!" "Skinner!"), history, religion, cars, comedy, technology, sound, and anything that took our fancy. He was as generous in conversation as he was in life, and I cherish those memories of civilised yet fun discourse. Of course it was fun. He was a fun guy.
He also introduced me to The Big Bang Theory and Posh Nosh. That's worth a few points.
It also saddens me that I could not offer more practical help to Bec during the long struggle. I feel no guilt; I did what I could, but what I could offer was so pitifully little that it's human to want more of everything. More energy. More time. Perhaps my best contribution came early after the diagnosis, where I was able to share insights and experiences gained from my brother's cancer, which was so heartbreakingly similar. There is one thing I've learned throughout the losses of the last few years--Grandma, Brother, MIL, FIL, Aunt, Father, and now Friend--that there is much guilt is mixed up in grief, but it's one thing that you do actually have control over.
Mikey was worried that I would be upset by his illness, because of my own experiences. He was the one with terminal cancer, yet he was doing the worrying about my welfare. Today at the memorial service I discovered that this was true of his pattern in life.
And now I'm babbling. There were a lot of tears today. We lost another one of the good ones, but a lot of people were there today to notice and remember. We will keep remembering. Fly well Mikey.
I have found myself unable to write about this sad event until now, but the experience of the memorial service and sharing of so many wonderful memories by so many people has allowed me to finally face this. Mikey's death was no surprise--he had been fighting a particularly nasty form of brain cancer for nearly three years--but the actual end was a shock I am still trying to process. Again.
When I first encountered Mikey in the late 80's he was MOB, a curly-haired wild child far deeper into the Perth music and alternative scenes than I was ever prepared to go. Despite the wild child tag I'm pretty sure I remember him being well thought of. Yes, my memories of him from that period are vague and I'll not try to dress them up. Our circles overlapped, and we were at many of the same parties, but that was about all.
It wasn't until many years later that I saw him at a Swancon masquerade sporting those amazing dreadlocks that we connected properly. It might have been a subsequent Swancon where we actually talked properly about sound and theatre and costumes, which must have been after he started going out with his bride-to-be Bec, my friend since university days. Bec was in the same circles as I, but she and Mikey had managed to overlap properly, rather to a lot of people's surprise. Before I spent time with them both I was mystified how those two would work together as a couple, but oh how well it worked. I was not alone in my mystification, nor was I alone in seeing how well their relationship worked.
Given the chance to get to know him then and in the post-dreadlock phase their relationship made perfect sense, and it was a privilege to discover what a lovely, kind, intelligent, funny, curious, thoughtful, and mischievous person this bad boy actually was. He gave *great* hugs. I didn't get to find this out about Mikey until after I'd lost my brother to cancer, and I thought it an enormous shame that I'd never had the chance to bring these two similarly wonderful men together. And then Mikey was diagnosed with the same kind of cancer that had killed my brother.
Well fuck.
Increasingly house-bound by my own illness I was unable to visit Mikey as often as I would have liked, particularly once I discovered how well he responded to scalp massage and generally being treated like a cat. I so wanted to be there. He was so easy to talk to, our earlier mismatch in hobbies being more than replaced by common interests in science fiction, food, psychology ("Jung!" "Freud!" "Jung!" "Skinner!"), history, religion, cars, comedy, technology, sound, and anything that took our fancy. He was as generous in conversation as he was in life, and I cherish those memories of civilised yet fun discourse. Of course it was fun. He was a fun guy.
He also introduced me to The Big Bang Theory and Posh Nosh. That's worth a few points.
It also saddens me that I could not offer more practical help to Bec during the long struggle. I feel no guilt; I did what I could, but what I could offer was so pitifully little that it's human to want more of everything. More energy. More time. Perhaps my best contribution came early after the diagnosis, where I was able to share insights and experiences gained from my brother's cancer, which was so heartbreakingly similar. There is one thing I've learned throughout the losses of the last few years--Grandma, Brother, MIL, FIL, Aunt, Father, and now Friend--that there is much guilt is mixed up in grief, but it's one thing that you do actually have control over.
Mikey was worried that I would be upset by his illness, because of my own experiences. He was the one with terminal cancer, yet he was doing the worrying about my welfare. Today at the memorial service I discovered that this was true of his pattern in life.
And now I'm babbling. There were a lot of tears today. We lost another one of the good ones, but a lot of people were there today to notice and remember. We will keep remembering. Fly well Mikey.
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