Rest in peace old friend...

As some of you know, a group from our church in Pittsfield were back in my old stomping grounds of Cleveland, OH this past week.  We were at a wonderful Jazz and Liturgy symposium.  And while I didn't have much of a chance to connect with any of my old buddies, I thought of them all and held them close in prayer.

When we got home, I received word that my old friend, Michael Daniels, was found dead in his apartment.  There are probably not many left to grieve Michael's death, but I do and want to celebrate his hard, complicated and beautiful life.  I loved Michael - I helped him on the road to sobriety - and give thanks to God that for the past 25 years he was clean and sober.

I met Mike on a nasty cold and windy night in Cleveland.  Our church office had received a call that Cheryl Daniels' father had recently died and she wanted to plan a memorial service.  I set up a pastoral call and headed into one of the rougher West Side public housing projects in the rain.  When I got to their house both Michael and Cheryl were trashed. He was the blackest man I had ever met and was very suspicious of this youngish, white clergy man.  We sat in their living room trying to plan the memorial service amidst garbage and liquor bottles.  And while they were fumbling around to find something on the coffee table, a loaded 45 caliber pistol fell to the floor. I was certain I was going to meet my death that night.

The funeral came and went and I wondered if I would ever see anyone from the Daniels' family again.  As is often the case with people wrestling with grief AND addictions, they come and go and disappear and return without any discernible pattern and that was true with Mike and Cheryl. Then, after about 10 months, I got a call from Michael that Cheryl had disappeared.  She was being treated for bipolar issues and had gone missing after going off her medication. We searched bus stops and homeless shelters for a few nights until we eventually found her in the psych ward at the county hospital.  

After a short time, she was released with meds that made her almost catatonic. I helped them move into a new apartment after they were evicted from their old home.  And things seemed to be getting better for about a month and I was hopeful.  Then I got a frantic and weeping call from Michael telling me that he had been arrested and needed to be bailed out of the city jail.  When I got there it seems that when Michael went out on a Saturday morning for cigarettes, Cheryl put his gun into her mouth and killed herself.  Once again, she had gone off her meds and now he was being held for murder.  When it finally became clear to the police that this death was a suicide, Michael was released and I drove him home.  Only problem was that after the police had arrested him, his landlord had thrown all his belongings out on the front lawn. So when we arrived in the pouring rain, almost everything of value had been taken and picked over by scavengers and junkies.

With no where else to go and shocked by this wife's death, I brought him home and put down a mattress on our living room floor.  He adored my two young daughters - who were very apprehensive of this alcoholic black man - but he stayed with us for about two weeks.  I finally got him into transitional housing and one of the requirements was that he get straight.  He lasted 3 days, stumbled and fell off the wagon but was given one last chance.  The day after we buried his wife, however, Michael fell off the wagon in a BIG way and was kicked out of his last hope - so he called me weeping.

I sat with him and listened to his broken heart - I wept with him, too about the hopelessness of his life - and then said:  Brother, the time has come for you to make a choice.  I can't bring you back to my home.  So either we say good-bye and who the fuck knows what will happen next or I drive you to the county detox unit and we start to get you clean.

With almost NO hesitation he said, "Man, I've done lost EVERYTHING that I loved... just take me to the center. It can't be worst than this." And after 28 days of treatment, he came out clean and sober.  And Michael STAYED clean and sober for the next 25 years until he died.

He used to kid me that I was the blackest white man he ever knew. "Dude, you are PASSING" he used to tell me.  "You have them big lips and nappy hair and you're favorite color is red.  And you preach like a gospel man... so don't bullshit me.  You be black!"  For the entire time I was in Cleveland, Michael rode the van and was faithful at church and AA.  I was telling some of my Pittsfield friends as I showed them around the old town, "My old buddy Mike Daniels used to work over there parking cars... I wonder what's going on in his life?"

And now I hear he is dead.  Michael didn't have any living family that I know of and I suspect he was buried in a pauper's grave. But he was a man of depth, integrity, wit and commitment who took the hard breaks of his hard life and turned them into something of beauty and integrity. He served his church with vigor and helped other drunks get sober and I loved that man. 

I took my Pittsfield friends by my old Cleveland church, Trinity United Church of Christ, on West 25th Street.  And as we pulled into the parking lot, Eva shouted:  Your NAME is still on the sign!  I've been gone for 17 years and my name was still on the street sign. Tonight that makes me smile while I weep and give thanks to God that Michael Daniels - and so many other saints of the Lord - were a part of my life.