Michael & Me

Prepare yourselves, I have very sad news today.

Michael Murray, the founder of GalaxyBrain.ca and publisher of my book "That Looks Good on You - You Should Buy It!" -That Looks Good on You - passed away early this morning.

I know, I know, but Michael would want me to plug my book. It was my turn for him to do it himself, and he was as proud of it as I am.

He'd also want me to plug his, though, so go buy "A Van Full of Girls" if you haven't already. You'll laugh, you'll cry, your emotions will run the gamut.

Michael was just one of the many inspiring characters I've had the good luck to connect with over the internet, but the better luck to connect with in real life, when I attended a reading for his book, A Van Full of Girls, at the Manx here in his hometown of Ottawa, as well as a 50-something birthday party, with he and his beautiful wife, Rachelle.

I bought his book at the launch, fending off his dad who wanted me to buy a dozen more, and baked him a raspberry pie for his birthday.

We had a rollercoaster relationship, Michael and I, pretty much all of it taking place online, whether we were dishing dirt in private messages - he was an epic dirt-disher - or yukking it up in public threads on Facebook.

Michael could keep a thread going forever, and had a particular rapport with our mutual friend, Jane Michelle Wilson, whom we both knew to be the most excellent person on the planet, while Michael would make out like she was really Leona Helmsley or Cruella de Vil (for you youngsters).

He did the same thing with Margaret Atwood, in his many tales of their ongoing feud she knew nothing about, probably the funniest shit I've read on the internet.

His politics, his nostalgia, drove me up the wall, and I would have to remind myself several times a day during our many back and forths that this slip of a man lived with a fucking oxygen tank strapped to his back and never complained about his health.

I was mad enough about it for both of us, I guess, the unfairness of it all, and please don't ever think I don't appreciate the primo hand I was dealt, in spite of all my whining.

Michael Murray I am not.

So yes, we squabbled, a lot, but always made up. He knew of life, did Michael. His short story posts of hospital visits and stays was the most poignant writing I've ever read, and although he promised me the brutal truth in private messages, he never delivered. He didn't want to dwell there any longer than he had to, I guess.

Or maybe he just wanted to spare me.

He was a fan of my writing, a fan of me, and it really was everything. After reading the first two chapters of my book, not easy for Michael, who admitted to having the attention span of a newt, thanks to his social media addiction, "You have a voice!" It was exactly what I needed to hear to keep going, the perfect pitch. When he conceived GalaxyBrain.ca with a view to serializing my book, he gave me the gift of readers, readers who took the time to express their appreciation, and I'll be forever grateful to him and to them, his many, many, many friends.

He was so loved.

It settled me down, GalaxyBrain.ca. Michael had given me what I needed. I wrote more pieces. He edited. I argued. Whole pieces got scrapped, better ones written, both of us so proud of ourselves.

It was fun. We had fun. Calling each other brilliant and geniuses, no superlative too much for us.

We were gods.

Back as mortals, we squabbled over politics. I found him endlessly, frustratingly stubborn, as he would no doubt say of me. Did he? He probably did. Omigawd, he did, didn't he. Dirt-disher. But we wanted the same world, too, a world full of good things for everybody, magic, joy, creativity.

We shared the sentiment that work was drudgery, a waste of our glorious lives, and he urged me over and over and over again to quit whatever government assignment I was on, which was exactly what I wanted to hear, over and over and over again, while I slogged my way through the latest waste of my glorious life.

Oh how I loved complaining to Michael about work. "You should quit! Work is stupid!" he'd write back, and I'd live to work another day. As the legend goes, when Michael got cancer as a young man, he decided he wanted to be a writer, and that was that, no more wasting time watching the hands of a clock go 'round.

In my last message to him I conceded we were fellow travellers and I would miss him. A lot.

And as promised, I do.

The world's light has dimmed a little so let's all who knew Michael light a candle for it this evening.

I'd like to leave off here with my condolences to Michael's beautiful wife, Rachelle (the real Galaxy brain as Michael reveals in his bio, before hilariously snatching all credit back for himself, because he was very, very funny) and their pride and joy, Jones, the snappiest dresser any of us will ever know, his sense of style so clearly handed directly down to him by his loving, dapper, father.

Goodbye, Michael. It was a gas knowing you. And rest assured, my friend, you will forever live on in our hearts.