A different funeral

I went to a funeral tonight for a nice man that I worked with for about 4 years. His name is Mike Petrick and he looked like a cross between Santa Claus and a ZZ Top band member. He was a large pleasant man who had a happy disposition. He rode a Harley in his younger years, but once he had to give it up, his free time was devoted to the races, the Packers, and his friends at the local bar. For Mike, that bar was Sparky's in Cudahy. And that's where his retirement party was held last July. The place was pretty full of the locals who all knew Mike. Apparently, he had a Sparky's family besides his real family. It was a good time but then everything we did with Mike was a good time. We saw him at festivals, his favorite being Summerfest, he enjoyed every opportunity for a good time.

Not long after Mike retired, he had a heart attack. It took a long time, but he recovered from that event and changed his life. Before the heart attack, he ate Fritos every day, along with a variety of things that were not healthy, but he changed all that to recover. Even though he cut back on some of the things that were bad for him he still had the races and the Packers games. On the day he died, he was heading to Racine to watch the races with his friends. He blacked out behind the wheel of his car and hit a tree. The paramedics were called and he was coherent but on the way to the hospital he had a massive heart attack and died. The doctors think his defibrillator fired which made him black out at the beginning of the heart attack that killed him.

One of my fondest memories of hanging out with Mike was at The Wicked Hop where we had many after-work parties. Mike was fond of another co-worker, Raquel. In the course of the evening, he bought her one of every type of martini that was on the drink menu. Since there were so many, she shared them with me. It was a crazy night, and by the end of it both me and Raquel were on Mike's lap while he pretended to be Santa Claus.

The funeral was a little different than most. There was no clergy so his sister spoke first, stating that she didn't know about Mike's relationship with God - that was between Mike and God so she was going to talk about his life, then Mike's niece read a poem, his best friend spoke, followed by Mike's brother. The service ended with the Lord's prayer. After the service we got balloons, there were 64 of them, one for each year of Mike's life so some of us had to share since there were so many people there. We then headed to the parking lot to release them all at the same time, followed by a shot of Jack Daniels. It felt like an appropriate end to honor a nice man. It's too bad he couldn't been with us longer, his gentle nature will be missed.