[DMcCunney]

My SO Kat and I got a call from his wife Naomi this morning that our friend Michael had died.

One of my repeated comments has been that the people I love are like precious cut gems, always displaying a new facet you hadn't known was there. Sometimes people are "diamonds in the rough" and you have to look beneath the surface to see the quality below.

That described Michael. When I first met him, in SF fandom over 30 years ago, he was firmly in the category of "people I avoid if possible", and we had only passing contact at the occasional SF con over the years. In more recent years, Kat and I became friends with he and his third wife, Naomi. Under an exterior that could be brash and offensive, there was an intelligent and caring man, passionate about things he loved. He was highly knowledgeable about classic SF, collected first editions of H. G. Wells, and had an encyclopedic knowledge of old SF films and classic radio and TV shows. His passion contributed to his prickly personality, as "tactfiul", "diplomatic", and "restrained" weren't words that applied to him, and he could be outspoken, to put it mildly, about things that upset him.

I discovered somewhat to my surprise that I liked the man. And he and Naomi completed each other. She once commented that if you combined her and Michael, you got a functioning human being. Naomi was impressive in her own right, a former top Air Force jet mechanic who switched to nursing after developing an allergy to jet fuel. Watching the pair of them together was a touching experience. She smoothed some of his rough edges, and he provided grounding she needed.

He had just put in his papers to retire from the US Postal Service last year, and he and Naomi were making plans for moving to property they owned in upstate New York, when he wound up in the hospital. It turned out to be double pneumonia with complications, and he was in intensive care for a month, with a guarded prognosis. We breathed a sigh of relief when he recovered enough to be released. He was at last Lunacon in March in New York in a wheelchair, but rapidly recovered to the point where he was up and around, with most of his former energy. He was still wearing a trache, which the doctors were reluctant to remove and close the incision in his throat till they were sure he was out of the woods, but he was active and in good spirits, looking forward to moving to their retirement home.

A week or so ago, he went back into the hospital with a relapse of pneumonia. He was released, but relapsed again at home. He was coughing up blood, and was coded in the ambulance. We got the call from Naomi that he had passed away at 8 this morning. The last words he said to her were "I love you."

Kat and I have been the contact points, putting out the word on the various channels that would reach people who knew Michael. It's not the first time we've been in this position, and I'm grimly certain it won't be the last, but it doesn't get easier, just more necessary. I expect more interesting events down the road. Right now, Naomi is operating by reflex. Some time later, the realization will fully settle in that Michael is gone, and she faces a great black void of life without him. We'll do what we can, and I hope it will be enough.

It reinforced my resolve to treasure those I know, as they might be taken from me unexpectedly, and to have patience with those I find annoying, as there might be unexpected depths hidden behind the things that annoyed me.

But if there is a deity listening who has control over such things, I'd as soon not have to do this again, ever.
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Dennis