Mike Choi: Be good to our sons too

Gorgeous day!!! So beautiful, it was impossible not to feel energized. I even got out and cleared some dried debris from last fall from the garden in front of my apartment.

Home on a break and taking a look at my blog... wondering what to post next...
but have to leave NOW to get back to work. Quickly get my stuff and go to car.

Turn on car... radio comes on just as the DJ is saying "by the Red Hot Chili Peppers".

"Under the Bridge" plays.
*a song that I associate with Mike since his suicide.


I suddenly feel a weight on my chest inappropriate for the beauty of the day... thinking of Mike. I think about Chiron... how some wounds never heal...
I worry about lifting this emo weight before having to work on my client.

I walk into the spa just as "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" by IZ begins to play. *I've told my children that I want that song played at my funeral.
It is so wistfully happy and tropical that the weight immediately lifted.

I put my purse away, and made sure my room was ready as IZ's song played... the next song came on just as I was going to go get the intake card for my client...
"Under the Bridge" came on again.

My logical brain fried out on the spot.

While working on my client, I kept getting the picture of Mike sitting in my room as we would talk... he kept telling me that he was sorry for hitting me up right now, but that the shift in the weather had finally charged my energy enough for him to get my attention.

???
I know that I've been intending to tell his story, as it has bothered me that he would otherwise go to the grave w/o the truth being told... but, I didn't expect him to push on me to get on with it already.
(but then, I could just be making too much of co-inki-dinks)


*********************************

To put it bluntly, the first time I saw Mike he took my breath away. I found him physically beautiful; his dark hair and smooth complexion hinted to his half Asian heritage. He so resembled Keanu Reeves in "the Matrix", even wearing almost exclusively black, my children gave him the nickname "Neo". Mike was also strong, flexible and full of energy.

But upon meeting Mike, you could tell that there was something very deep as yet unresolved within him. It left him with a nervous energy which made silence painfully uncomfortable for him. He also had a difficult time staying in one place for too long. He never went far from where he grew up as he held close to those he trusted as a teen, but had difficulty maintaining a home base.

Mike had a Cancer sun. This is a difficult sun placement for men in our culture, as they are not encouraged to be so in touch with their feelings, and Cancer is all about feelings, home, and the "mom" archetype. They tend to love their moms or hate their moms, often with it being an intense confusing jumble of both. Mike manifested this to the extreme. And with good reason.

Mike was the product of a rape, and his mother never let him forget it.
He was the dark troubled high school teenager who preferred to fail than have to change for gym. Little did anyone know that the reason was to hide the bruises all over his body from his mother beating him on a regular basis.

Despite this, Mike refused to speak badly about his mother, or even express anger toward her. He believed that most women wouldn't have even borne him due to the means he was conceived, and that he owed her.

To say the least, this affected Mike's approach to love, and oh how he wanted to find love. Only women with real issues who couldn't treat him well need apply for intimacy; if a woman treated him too well, she was a life long friend instead. He wasn't able to receive such friendship from his romantic relationships.

I was a friend. He would periodically just show up to chat, usually when things were either going particularly well or particularly bad. Since I know astrology, friends will often do this, asking "So what's up with the planets lately?"

Mike turned 37 on July 20, 2009.
I hadn't seen him in months when he came to see me shortly before his birthday. He came by to tell me that he was staying somewhere new. He wasn't sharing details, but he sounded hopeful. He was clear that he was trying to stop drinking. It would sadden and upset me to learn later that he had partied hard around his birthday and been arrested for drunk driving. This would have been bad enough, but the police didn't keep him to sleep it off. They released him right away, without making him have someone pick him up. He was still drunk, got in his car and drove away. The police picked him up immediately and re-arrested him, this time guaranteeing him at least some jail time imposed when he would go to court.
*something still seems wrong to me, as though he was set up, in how the police just let him go after the first arrest*


Saturday April 2, 2009
A young couple that has been friends with my oldest son since high school, Mikey and Brandy, came to visit that Saturday shortly after noon. Brandy was a bit hyper. She shared that she had been in the car with her mother that morning, and that they were going to take the Old Bridge from Portsmouth to Badger's Island. She shared that they were unable because the bridge was closed due to someone having climbed it, threatening to jump. Her mother had turned the car around, both not wanting to watch, as well as knowing an alternative route to their destination, so Brandy was not sure of the outcome of the morning's drama. We ignorantly joked about how she should have had a video camera with her.

Monday April 5, 2009
I stopped at the corner Mobil store near my neighborhood. The employees here know just about everyone from the small neighborhood, as everyone eventually stops for snacks, soda/beer, cigarettes or gas, at least once in a while. Some of the employees even live there, as this day Karen is working the cash register, and she lives just a block from me.

I took my Smartfood cheese popcorn to the register and grabbed a roll of spearmint Lifesavers, and put them on the counter. Karen's face darkened, and she said, "Ann, I know you were friends with Mike, I'm so sorry."

"What about Mike?"

"Oh Ann, I thought you would have heard, he died."
She didn't need to tell me how.
I suddenly remembered a couple of years ago, Mike jokingly (or so I thought at the time) telling me that he thought it would be fun to climb the old bridge like a jungle gym.

I could barely breathe, and was barely aware that my face was wet with tears as Karen apologized for my hearing in such a manner. I told her that I had to hear somehow, and that she certainly had nothing to apologize for, though I hardly remember getting back into my car and driving home.



Mike was buried, and had a memorial thanks to the caring and generosity of his employer. His mother refused to even claim his body.




I may occasionally vent about fathers who prefer their lives to their children, but to be fair mothers can cripple their children as well. Mike had to be able to express his anger to even begin to heal, instead he chose to jump off a bridge.


John Mayer's beautiful song "Daughters" fits the other foot as well...
so moms... let's make sure to be good to our sons too.