I started to write this awhile ago and it became very difficult. Mike meant so much to me. I did, however, know what I wanted to write about. An answer to a seemingly simple question that allowed me to think about all the great times we shared in life: "When did you and Mike get so close?"
Mike and I have been friends since freshman year in college, so I had to think back on when "Mike, Dave's roommate" became "Mike." I was going to write something long about that moment, but then realized that the destination IS the journey. So here's a few moments that could have been the time Mike became one of my closest friends, followed at the end by the event I consider it to have happened, when I was 22 years old and moved for the first time. There were a lot of potentials though...
It could have been the day he sent me an article published by Curbed Hamptons, a publication that ranks #1000 in the most popular American websites. On the front page was a photo of all of us, a little over the legal limit with smiley heart stickers all over our faces at a Hamptons watering hole called the "Boardy Barn". It was positioned above an article that talks about how "this establishment sells more beer in a summer than Yankee stadium does in a year." Mike would vouch for the accuracy of this piece, primarily because all that beer was soaked into our clothes.
Or it may have been when we both realized how little regard we had for our phones, wallets, and keys. You know...the less important things in life. We simply never connected the dots to how each of those things allowed us to function. The summer after the Boardy Barn day, we were again visiting our friend Brie in the Hamptons for her birthday. Mike needed to leave early to see his grandmother, and just as he said his goodbyes, he came to the realization that his keys were missing. He suspected they must have fallen off in either the sprawling front yard, or the beach front backyard. So after Mike led us in a chorus of laughter over his keys being lost again, we spent the next 2 hours treasure hunting in the front yard, and digging up that poor beach. We finally called off the search when the keys were nowhere to be found. He pulled out his phone to call his parents, and then opened his wallet...where the "lost" keys fell out onto the grass. We were all laughing. 2 hours of time gone looking for these keys and we all just cracked up. And that was one of Mike's great gifts -- Whether a situation was going well or going poorly, this was a guy who made you belly laugh.
Or maybe it was five years earlier when we realized our birthdays were 2 days apart. This allowed us to join forces every March and bring all of our friends together in one room. We always had one moment where we were friend-watching their interactions. Who was arguing over basketball? Who was the most overserved? (Usually us.) Didn't they just play this song twice? We never said any of this out loud. We didn't have to. We leaned back, sipped, and smiled.
It REALLY could have been when Mike worked so much during one financial closing season that Persado gave him an expensed dinner anywhere in NYC, and to bring someone. He wasn't dating anyone at the time, so he called me and told me if I wanted in, we'd have a steak dinner on the company. The investors didn't know that 27-year-old Mike and I having dinner together is typically a money-losing proposition for everyone involved, but this was especially insane. 3 hours, 2 bottles of wine, two bone-in ribeyes the size of a brontosaurus, what felt like an entire bread mill covered in steak tartar and bone marrow, and a thousand laughs later, we were comatose next to the kitchen. It was the most memorable dinner of my life.
It could have been when we went to Six Flags and Dave Symonds' flip phone flew out of his pocket on the rollercoaster Nitro, never to be seen again. Dave was distraught. Mike waited a beat before dropping a mischevious smile and a... "Well, it happens." Mike and I were now not the only ones to lose a cell phone. I'm not even sure this qualifies as a ground-breaking friendship story, so much as "Mike is hilarious" story.
Or it was when he called to tell me that his office was moving directly across the street from mine, and that we could have lunch all the time. We did that about once a week for a year, and this may have been the one thing that kept me at the job. Once we were acquired and had to move away from Chelsea, I quit 2 weeks later.
It was certainly posible that it was when my girlfriend, our friends, and I came to visit Mike and his parents at their summer house. Mike told us to be ready for the beach the next day, so we all did what everyone does on beach days, wake up at 7 am, get our suits on, and prepare to beat the traffic to secure a prime spot by the water. We were up at 8 am. Mike slept in until 11. Because Mike sleeps in until 11. By the time we saw him, Mike's mom had made us breakfast, packed, and I'm pretty sure I finished reading War and Peace in its entirety. He opens the door, sees everyone, let's out a small laugh and is all "Heeey guys. Sorry." Completely and effortlessly himself.
Or it could have been when he was in DC and ran into one of my closest friends at Busboys & Poets where she was getting breakfast before boarding a bus home. He called me to see if that was definitely her, and then asked her if she wanted a ride back to the city. His frame of mind always began with "How can I help another person?" She called me to tell me how nice it was that he thought of doing that.
Or maybe it was on any day where I wanted to leave Mike a voicemail message, and his voicemail redirected to an automated "The person you are trying to reach has a mailbox who is full. Goodbye!" message. (Shortly after, I followed his lead also stopped checking voicemails.) Mike's silent voicemail protest was one of my favorite unintentional comedy moments in life. I continuously forgot he did that, so every time you let it ring 4 times and got the same message, you'd have to bust out laughing. But he ALWAYS got in touch with you and met up. One of my favorite Mike super powers.
It could have been our most recent tradition of meeting for drinks at Eataly in the Financial District, situated almost exactly in the middle of our apartments. We chose the same seat every time, similar to the Seinfeld episode where Jerry and George go to Monk's Cafe, look at the same table they always sit in, and go "Well, how about this one?" Not to overstate a recent tradition, but this MAY have been the most important drinks in the world. We solved world peace, wrote jokes that would make Robin Williams spit out his coffee, traded career advice about growing our direct reports, talked a lot about our past, present, and future relationships, and developed strategies for co-owning land by the beach one day. This was done once every other month, just so the world could have a fighting chance at keeping up.
But it wasn't any of those times.
It was during a period when I had to move apartments. I noticed that every time I needed to move in my 20's, Mike was the first volunteer. Always. With only pizza and beer as a reward, Mike helped push mattresses up winding stairs, curse at narrow NYC landings with me, wonder why I kept half the college textbooks I did, crack the best jokes, genuinely ask how my sisters are doing, how my parents are doing, my aunts and uncles, and high five when it was all over.
It's four months later and I'm no less sad. I got to spend 15 or 16 amazing years watching Mike truly go beyond what's expected of a man, a son, a brother, a cousin, a nephew, and a friend. I mostly feel a deep sense of pity for every stranger I see on the street, knowing that they're robbed of a chance to meet the kind of human that almost never comes along. Thoughtful, always-self-improving, genuinely loving the people in his life. It's all too rare.
I think of you all every day. I lit a candle for Mike in Notre Dame, Sienna Cathedral, and Sacre Coeur when I was in Europe. I will post those.
Always feel free to reach me over email. matt.desiena {at} gmail.com. Just don't try voicemail. I learned not to check them :) .
Matt
