My Friend Michelle

My friend Michelle “threw off her mortal coil” in her 61^st year last week. And I use that expression as the most apt I could think of in this circumstance. Michelle was a fierce defender of justice, a rabid protector of lost souls, a not-to-be-trifled-with trivia maven, a Fluevog shoe flaunter, a clawed defender of female cat owners (single or not), and sometimes a complete pain in the ass.

I first met Michelle at the Toronto Trivia League. At that point, she was on one of the teams, but later she was a Quizmaster (and an awesome one). Our crew at TTL, is (in the manner of most trivia leagues) a very welcoming, convivial, and also a “don’t-even-think-about-missing-a-Ferris-question” community. (Those of you in-the-know, will know of what I speak.)

I’m not sure how the subject came up, but one day we were talking about singing and that morphed into a discussion abut Choir! Choir! Choir!, a drop-in singing group that had a bit of a cult following in Toronto. “I would love to go to there!” I said. And Michelle said, “Yes, Grasshopper, you may have the pebble.” And we made a plan to go the following Wednesday to the regular Choir (as insiders call it) meet-up at Clinton’s pub near Bloor and Bathurst. But initially our plan got a little bit (literally) derailed. Michelle said she would get off the subway at Davisville and we’d take the next one together. When the subway approached the station, I saw her face in the last car and waved wildly from the platform, but she was already southbound towards St. Clair.

But all was not lost, even though (being Michelle) she didn’t have a cellphone. As a testament to there being no catastrophe to not being connected to the electronic universe at all times, we eventually rendezvoused at Clinton’s in time to sing our lungs out with “Oh What a Night,” and became true buddies. In good times and bad.

Michelle managed to make the many adversities she encountered as accommodating as she could. This is not surprising, because she was more than welcoming to strangers. She lived with the indignities of Crohn’s disease, including many interventions and surgeries that were not kind to her quality of life. And yet she persisted.

She once told me that Matt, her husband, was like her knight in shining armour – holding his sword aloft, her protector, her sanctuary. And Matt, I can’t begin to imagine what a loss you are trying to comprehend. Godspeed, Michelle.