Remembering Mike Ashley: The older brother I never had

 His name was Mike Ashley.

I don't have a photo of him.  But in my mind's eye I can still see him.  Nineteen years old.  Brown hair and a little bit of a mustache.  He was a handsome young man.  With a twinkle in his eye and kindness in his words.  He was as all-American a boy as you'd ever be likely to find.  A pure wholesome country Christian man.  And a hard worker and just as much an eager learner.

Dad had known Mike's father.  The elder Ashley had died a few years earlier.  Mike's father had been a farmer.  Something that Mike had found himself wanting to get into.  And so it was that late in the spring of 1985 my dad brought Mike aboard on our family's farm.  Mike wasn't just going to help out with the operation.  Dad made it his mission that he was going to teach Mike everything that he knew about what it meant to be a dairy farmer.  Being with us was going to be like college for Mike.  It was an education he took to with enthusiasm and zeal.  And it was one of the happiest times that I had ever seen Dad.  He was getting to be a mentor to a young man.  I can't remember Dad ever being such a teacher-figure to anyone else in his lifetime.  But he certainly took Mike under his wing and was going to teach him all that he could about the dairy business.

But that's not all that Mike was to us.  To our family that fast took him in as one of our own.  Mom thought the world of Mike.  My sister, I am pretty sure, had a crush on him.  And as for me...

Mike fast became someone who I never knew that I needed: the older brother that I didn't have.  He was someone I looked up to.  I respected Mike and he respected me.  I showed him some things too, that he had never seen before.  During the lunch break that lasted a couple of hours each day (while the cows were replenishing their milk), Mike would often come by my room. I got to show him my Transformers toys: something he VERY quickly picked up how to make them change from robots to vehicles.  I let him read my comic books, and my many copies of MAD Magazine.  The latter was something he especially found hilarious!  I can still hear him laughing at some of the stuff he was finding in MAD.

Mike was eight years older than I was.  He was the kind of person who I wanted to grow up to be like someday.  I don't think he had a girlfriend but if he ever got married, she was going to be a very blessed woman to have him in her life.

On the day before it happened, on August 6th, Mike had been in my room during the lunch break.  And I showed him how to change some more Transformers.  After he and Dad left to go back to the barn for the afternoon's milking, I found myself thanking God that He had put such an amazing person into my life, and that I hoped to be like him someday.

It was forty years ago today, on August 7th, 1985, that we lost Mike.

He had been behind the barn, on a tractor, scraping cow manure into a manure spreader. And if you don't know already cow manure is some of the best fertilizer imaginable. On a small farm it is a very valued and precious resource. And scraping it into the spreader was something that had been done like a zillion times.

It worked like this: the manure spreader was parked below the high end of a concrete ramp. Whoever was on the tractor would tow a bladed attachment and scrape manure that had come out of the barn and cattle stalls, off the ramp and into the spreader.

That is what Mike was doing.

We will never know what caused it to happen. Maybe he saw a deer off in the field and was momentarily distracted.  Maybe it was something else...

The tractor drove over the top of the ramp and flipped over and onto Mike.  He was probably killed instantly.

It was Dad who found him a short while later. He saw smoke coming from behind the barn. And then he saw the overturned tractor with Mike crushed beneath it.

My sister and I had been told that Mike got killed. We watched from our house as first responders, an ambulance, law enforcement and many other people descended on the farm.  A short while later Mom arrived, she had left  work as soon as Dad had gotten through to her.

That evening Mom took my sister and I to my grandmother's house in Reidsville.  Dinner was pizza from Domino's.  I was in such shock, my heart torn in pieces, that I really couldn't taste the food.

Granny said something that night that has always stuck with me: "The good die young."  It's still the closest thing to an explanation for why God would take someone as wonderful as Mike, so young, as I've ever heard.

A few nights later was the visitation at the funeral home.  It was an open casket viewing.  I now wish that I had not gone.  It didn't look like Mike.  That's the best I can put it.  I didn't recognize him.  And that became one of the many memories that I've had to carry for the rest of my life, that I want to go away and never torment me again.

Nothing was the same in our family after that.  We had lost one of our own, very much so.  Dad came in from the barn every evening afterward and would sit by the fireplace and break down in tears.  Two months later he himself was involved in another farming accident, one that almost cost him his right hand.  Dad figured that God was telling him to get out of the farming business.  Several months later, that's what he did.  But I digress.

Every year on this date, I remember Mike Ashley.  And I tell others about him.  He's mentioned in the book I've written and as I say in it, I refuse to let the young man who was the closest person I ever had to an older brother be forgotten by the world.  Because more than most he deserves to be honored.

And now you know about him, too.

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In memory of Mike Ashley

"The good die young."

Those were the words of my grandmother, twenty-five years ago this evening. And when those words were the most semblance of comfort that an eleven-year old kid had to grasp - even if he didn't really understand what it meant at the time - on what was at the time the absolute worst day of his life...

...well, they kinda stick with ya, even a quarter century later.

Heck, I can even still remember what I was wearing that day, what Granny was wearing, the most miserable dinner of pizza that I would ever have, all of the vehicles like neighbors' cars and the ambulance and the deputy sheriff cruisers that descended on our farm that afternoon. I can even tell you what show that I watched on television that night, trying and failing to lose myself, to stop thinking about it all...

...but most of all, I remember crying. Being inside the house with my sister and our two dachshund puppies, watching from the windows. I still remember calling my life-long best friend Chad, telling him about what happened: now I realize that I was desperate for a voice to talk to. And I couldn't stop crying. Harder than I ever had before until that day.

It was the ambulance arriving that first made me panic. The lady who took care of my other grandmother in the house across the road, she came to our front door. The first words that came out of me were "Did something happen to Dad?!"

No, Dad was okay.

But Mike had been killed.

Mike Ashley: 19 years old. Brown haired, a little bit of a mustache. As upstanding and Christian of a young man as you were ever likely to meet. He knew Dad because Dad had been friends with his father. And early in the summer of 1985, Mike started working on our dairy farm as a hired hand.

Being able to say that I grew up and worked on a dairy farm: that is something that I am very proud of. And with each passing year I realize how much happiness there could be found in that. I couldn't do too much, being about ten when I started. But on occasion Dad did let me help a calve to be born. And I can honestly say that I have milked cows by hand (go watch that scene in Witness where Harrison Ford's character is up at 4 a.m. to milk the cows on that Amish farm... and then imagine your friend and humble blogger doing that :-).

It was the people that Dad hired to work on our farm that I remember most vividly. Maybe that had something to do with my outlook on human nature, 'cuz at a very early age I had come to know so many kinds of people. They were white. They were black. They were migrant laborers from Mexico (some of whom spoke not a word of English, but we all seemed to understand each other somehow). They were my cousin Craig and my Uncle John. Some of them were characters in their own right. Others were - in their own way - downright silly. All of them worked hard, sometimes for a season and then going back to whatever or wherever, sometimes coming back to work again.

Mike Ashley though...

He worked as hard as anyone. Always cheerful, always smiling and with a twinkle in his eye. He was looking to go into farming as well, so this was kinda like college for him.

He was with us on the farm for two months. And in that time, well...

...he became the closest thing to an older brother that I would ever have.

I fast came to look up to Mike. Maybe it was the noble qualities that he had: qualities that in retrospect, I decided that I wanted to have in my own life. He became a role model to me.

And the thing is, I was admittedly pretty offbeat even as a kid. Mike was the first "grownup" who I had any extended time with who was sincerely interested in the things that I was interested in. And that had a lot of appeal to me.

So a lot of times in the afternoon, after Dad and Mike and whoever else had lunch and Dad took his usual nap before the afternoon milking, Mike would want to see the books that I was into. He enjoyed reading my comic books. He really loved going through my stash of MAD Magazines. And he even thought that my Transformers toys were very cool.

That is the last, best memory that I have of Mike. He was in my room on the afternoon of August 6th, and I was showing him how to convert my army of Autobots and Decepticons into their respective cars, trucks, guns, cassette tapes, what have you. Mike was instantly hooked on them! Pretty soon he was transformin' 'em just as well as me or anybody.

That was the afternoon of August 6th, 1985. And that night I found myself thanking God for the friendship that I had with Mike.

It was the very next day that Mike died on our farm.

He had been on a tractor, scraping cow manure into a manure spreader. And if you don't know already cow manure is some of the best fertilizer imaginable. On a small farm it is a very valued and precious resource. And it was something that had been done like a zillion times.

It worked like this: the manure spreader was parked below the high end of a ramp. Whoever was on the tractor would tow a bladed attachment and scrape manure that had come out of the barn and cattle stalls, off the ramp and into the spreader.

That is what Mike was doing.

To this day we don't know what caused it to happen. Maybe he saw a deer off in the field and was momentarily distracted.

The tractor drove over the top of the ramp and flipped over. Mike was killed instantly.

It was Dad who found him a short while later. He saw smoke coming from behind the barn. And then he saw the overturned tractor with Mike pinned beneath it.

A short while later the emergency vehicles and lots of cars and trucks started arriving. Mom got the call at work and rushed home immediately. She dropped my sister and me off at her mother's that night.

That's when Granny remarked that "The good die young."

Twenty-five years later and I'm still trying to suss it all out. I'd still like to know why God took Mike away from us: so young. So upstanding. So good...

He would have been 44 now. He should have known what it was like to be a husband and a father, 'cuz there's no doubt in my mind that he would have been the best. He should have had all the opportunities that a person as sweet and virtuous as he was... well, I think good people deserve more, anyway!

It's enough to make me question my own life. I'm now 36. Still young (and like to think that I'll always have that childlike quality no matter how many years go by), but I've had many more years than Mike ever got. Almost by twice as much. I look at myself and I don't see a necessarily "good" person. I see a flawed, messed-up guy who... doesn't deserve anything at all.

So help me, I have told God more times than I can count how unfair it is. That He would take someone like Mike Ashley from us and leave me - a complete screw-up who fails too many times more than I've ever succeeded - still here.

(Yeah I'll go ahead and admit it, for the first time: I am now divorced. And there is more that I am feeling led to write about that and have been feeling it for some time, but for now God is making me wait on that. It's not something to be proud of but at the same time, I cannot but feel that God has used this period to grow and mature me and make me appreciate His grace more than I ever have before... but that's an essay for another time.)

My life has been one cluster-#&@% after another. Why couldn't God have taken me? Why, why did He take Mike instead? Why does He seem to always take the people who deserve to have long, full lives on this earth?

"The good die young."

That is the closest thing to an answer that I have ever had. Maybe more so now than I ever did then, I have to draw some comfort from them.

Because God's ways... really aren't our ways at all. We expect Him to hand out goodies to us, rarely stopping to understand that this world is still a fallen place and tragedy does come from it.

I might still question Him at times. But, I am no longer angry with Him. About anything that has happened in my life. At long last I can see, and be thankful, that in spite of ourselves God doesn't mess up. That from each thing, for those who do love Him and seek after Him, He will never cease to eternally labor for our benefit.

A quarter century later, and I am thankful to God more than ever before: that He put Mike Ashley into our lives, for however brief a span.

And now you know, dear reader, that once there was a man and his name was Mike Ashley. And that he was a good man. He was someone that I have long strived to honor (and often missing the mark) with my own life and my own actions. And if others had the honor of knowing Mike, he would have left them with just as wonderful an impression from his strength of character, his humbleness, and his enthusiasm.

He was taken from this earthly realm twenty-five years ago today. I still miss him. And I still love him as the older brother that I never had.

And I do rejoice that he was here... and that he will be waiting for us all someday.

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