Losing a Best Friend 10 Years Later — Remembering Mike Zigler
On Friday, October 16, 2009, one of my best friends, Mike Zigler, died.
It was a stupid death. One that was completely avoidable if Zigler hadn’t been the man he was, and maybe, if I hadn’t left Las Vegas two years before to continue my life in Chicago. When people ask me how he died I joke and say, “With his hands at two and ten” — the textbook instruction on where a driver should place their hands on the steering wheel. Zigler died in his car, in the garage of my Las Vegas house, which he was renting from me.
...that when you spend time helping the truly broken—the ones who require more patience than seems reasonable—you walk away with two revelations: how much of yourself still works, and how vital the fragile thread of kindness is that holds people together.