Too many funerals for young people (first Jack, now Mike, almost me). Mike's service was beautiful, and one of Mike's friends (Cliff) read my eulogy. Several people from the old HP days came, which was really nice - we promised to stay in touch (even Pius Ching, who left for HP-China some twenty years ago, was there).
Henry Irving, a long-time HP friend and one of Mike's business partners was there, along with his wife. Henry and I were on HP neophyte training together some 26 years ago. Bohdan, my too-tall friend was there as well, along with Hal, MaryLynn, Balvinder, Mark Mesunes, and Dave Vincent - all from HP/Agilent.
Farewell, my friend......
For posterity purposes (and especially since I want to keep a copy), here's my eulogy...
Hi ... my name is Cliff, and I'm reading this for Doug - who's been a friend of Mike's for over 25 years. As fate would have it, he survived a stroke in October of 2009, and lost his voice. His voice is slowly coming back, but he's asked me to read this for him, as he can't at this point.
Laura and I first met Mike and Kelly when I started with HP in Edmonton in 1984. Actually, that's not quite true - I had met Mike several times when I was a customer of his at Northern Telecom in Saskatoon. I remember thinking at that time that it would be cool to become his friend, because the guy was smart, funny, and not too tall. Fate struck later that year, when I was offered a job at HP in Edmonton where Mike and I would work together. Mike helped us move into our little apartment in West Edmonton Village. He and Kelly had recently bought a small house in Mill Woods. I remember leaving work with Mike one Friday, and he reminded me the we had to come up with ten ideas to make a million dollars before the weekend was out. Laura and I owned a very large aquarium at the time, so one of our ideas was breeding piranha.
A short time later, Mike and I went downtown to look at this new computer "the Mac". Mike was so impressed that we gave up on the piranha idea, and decided to start writing software. Our first and only attempt was with a thing called "Turbo Pascal" and we never got past creating a logo. There seemed to be a new "get rick quick" scheme hatched in Mike's brain every day. We were transferred back to Saskatoon in '85, and Mike left HP to go to Northwest Digital soon after. The Friday afternoon schemes had to happen over the phone, or on shared weekends - of which there seemed to be many.
In the fall of 1984, Mike told us that Kelly was pregnant. Not to be outdone, we got pregnant too. Caitlin was born in the April of 1985, and our daughter followed that same summer. Then Brennan was born in June 1987, followed closely by, you guessed it, our son later that same summer. Nothing like keeping up with the Jones'. Over those early years, although we never seemed to live in the same city, we saw lots of each other. Camping trips to the Okanagan, road trips to Oregon and California, family holidays in Edmonton, Calgary, Saskatoon, or Vancouver. Our kids grew up together, and the four of us new parents were looking forward to growing old together.
Our first time staying with Mike and Kelly was shortly after the girls were born. We were now living in Saskatoon. At the time, they had two dogs. We slept in the living room while the dogs destroyed the kitchen. Actually, one of the most embarrassing moments in Kelly's life, I'm sure, was having to clean up after a dog with diarrhea while people she barely knew slept in the living room beside her. There's no stronger way to start a friendship than with a little embarrassment.
I also remember one summer, shortly after we'd moved back to Vancouver, that Kelly and I went out for a run ... bottom line, Kelly and I got separated, she went right and I went left, and the police eventually brought her back to our place. During all of this, while everybody was freaking out and I was convinced she was in a ditch someplace, Mike said to me "don't worry - she'll show up - she get's lost all the time". If he was worried, he didn't show it, and his calm was reflected in the kids - it was no big deal.
In 1996, Mike and I had some training in San Jose, California. Good excuse for a road trip - with the company paying for hotel rooms! Anyways, Mike told us all about driving through a giant redwood tree somewhere in Northern California when he was on training a few months previous, so we were forced to go along with Mike on his grand adventure to find the tree and drive through it. Needless to say, there turns out to be several trees you can drive through in California, and after the third one, I made Mike pay for my car too. The kids thought it was hilarious, as I got more and more frustrated about this stupid tree...
As recently as two years ago, Mike and Kelly joined us in Palm Springs for a week, and Mike and I started to talk about what the next 50 years would look like. This was before any of this had happened to him or to me, and I tried to convince him that buying an RV was a good idea and that eventually Kelly would agree - he just had to sell it hard. We looked at some RV's down in Palm Desert, and Mike even helped me convince Laura that I had bought a big truck from the local Toyota dealer in Indio. He let her stew about that overnight before letting her know it wasn't true. Mike called later that same summer to explain that the 2-Buck-Chuck we were drinking, was actually $3.15 buck chuck by the time he got it home to Calgary. This was as complicated as life got - how to import cheap wine through the border at Sweetgrass.
When Mike was diagnosed last year, I asked him if he was ready for this .. if he'd made his peace. He said he had, and in my opinion he did way better than me in handling his fate. He had last summer on the boat in Sicamous, perhaps his favorite place, and he looked happy. We saw them again as soon as I could travel after the stroke in February, and he looked content. We saw him yet again a couple of weeks ago, and he looked content ... now he was spitting food and laughing just like me, trying to talk and swallow without choking! As a matter of fact, the only time we've seen Mike truly unhappy was when the Oilers traded Gretzky.
One of my favorite pieces of advice about living comes from an unusual source, Ricky Gervais, creator of the TV series "The Office". Ricky said this in an interview once, and Mike and I talked about this as being pretty true: "Live your life, have a laugh, and try not to hurt anybody". From my perspective, Mike succeeded in all of these.
Mike was a great friend, the smartest guy I ever met, and his best friend just happened to be his wife. He will be missed. We love you Mike.
