21 Years Since Son, Mike Died. Superpower: Accepting What Is
My son, Mike, died 21 years ago at age 26. Wasn’t born with a tattoo telling him how long he had to live. Best spiritual health of his life. Left me a sign. Read Newsletter The same content as the podcast but not a verbatim transcript. Could be a book chapter with images. download the printable transcript here Contents Episode Proem 2023 I resurrect this episode to celebrate Mike and thank you, my readers, listeners, and watchers. It’s hard to believe that 21 years have passed since Mike died. He would have been 46. We would have been proud of him, and he proud of us. “Danny helped me love myself. I had to love myself to have a good relationship with him.” Still, the most glorious thing anyone has ever said about me. Let’s celebrate loving ourselves and at least one more. Mike, I feel you. Proem 2020 I wasn’t born with a tattoo on my ass telling me how long I have to live. Welcome to the second anniversary of Health Hats, the Podcast, episode number 99. On November 15th, 2018, the first episode honored my son, Mike Funk, who died on November 18th, 2002, eighteen years ago, age 26, of metastatic melanoma. Mike, a wise poet, found his best spiritual health in the last year of his life. Hence, the most memorable sentence in my life. I wasn’t born with a tattoo on my ass telling me how long I have to live. I’m grateful to have known Mike, my son, our brother, our friend. I resurrect this episode to celebrate Mike and celebrate this fantastic medium of sound and storytelling for advocacy and connection. Podcasting enriches my life and my work. I use podcasting to explore and organize my mind’s chaos, experiences, and feelings. I connect with people I admire for brief intimacies. I’m thankful for my podcasting compatriots. We have met weekly and biweekly for two years to support, critique, and challenge each other as artists and technicians. You know who you are. I’m grateful to my readers, listeners, sponsor, Abridge, and web/social media coach, Kayla Nelson. I miss my mom, Ruth van Leeuwen, my first and greatest blog critic, and follower. She would have tried to learn podcasting technology if she could have found a 15-year-old from her church to teach her how to use a podcast player. She died around Thanksgiving in 2014. Gratefully, here you go, episode one and ninety-nine. Happy Thanksgiving. Open Hearts 2018 Health Hats: In this session, I’ll share some tape of an interview with Mike a few months before he died. Bob Doherty conducted that interview and some thoughts and stories from me. One day, Mike and I were sitting at the kitchen table, talking about dying and superpowers. And Mike thought that he and I had the same superpower. We both accept what is. Not the ‘life sucks, what’re you gonna do’ variety of acceptance, but the ‘yup, here is impending death, how can we live our best lives’ variety. ‘Yup, he died young. Young death happens a lot. You open your heart, and tragedy walks right in. What’s the alternative, closed heart? Not for me. So, let me set the stage for you. This recording happened on July 17th, 2002, at my 50th birthday party. We had the party in the Potato Barn in Schoharie County, New York. When you hear some of the audio, you’ll hear a lot of noise. I’m able to filter some of it out, but not all of it. So here we are at my 50th birthday party. Love myself 2002 Bob Doherty was interviewing Michael Funk. I’m sure you’ll be able to tell who is who. Michael Funk: Yeah. I meant to just shoot questions, and we’ll just rap. Bob Doherty: All right. Why don’t I ask you the same questions I want to ask other people. How did you meet this jamoke called Danny? Michael Funk: I was going to school with his oldest son, Simon. I don’t know, a mutual friend introduced us and I went over to his place, decided that it seemed really comfortable and the type of environment that I hadn’t experienced before. I just wanted to hang out there. I didn’t really know Danny and Ann too well, I guess I met them on the first day. I just k