Unless you’re sitting by their bedside when it happens, I suppose, there will always be that emotional thump on your chest when learning that a friend has died:
“I wish I had called one more time.”
“I wish I had seen them one more time.”
“I hope he knows that I loved him.”
“Did she know that she inspired me?”
The photos that I want to share after hearing that our friend, mentor and muse Mike Touchstone has passed depict flowers on the porch, artisanal food and drink (he taught me about Luxardo cherries, among life’s other wonderments), and texts barraged by emojis.
The latter were followed by a confession: “These made me smile and giggle just a little.” For a grown man with a bottlebrush mustache, who spent a career in Fire and EMS, to use the word “giggle” to describe his own reaction by a birthday text message, elicited just two words from me: MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!
Mike was a cherub of brilliant brain, who retired from the Philadelphia Fire Department (PFD) only to go back to school—Cornell University, no less!—to obtain a certificate in Systems Thinking. Why study a simple subject, after all? Among his passions was delving into so-called “wicked problems,” to try to understand why industries keep from maximizing their potential.
He admonished me more than once, changing my thoughts in the process, to avoid calling Mobile Medicine an “industry.” Rather, he said, we aspire to be a profession, but if we’re going to reach that height of recognition, we need to elevate our standards and expectations of ourselves. He settled for nothing less, and that actually made it hard to chat by phone as often as I would have liked: Five-minute calls regularly turned into hourlong explorations of philosophy and debates about semantics.
In the driveway at home, forty-five minutes after I said I had to go inside. My wife was very curious at first; then I’d walk in and say, “I was on with Mike, talking about _______.” She understood. How I’ll miss those discussions.
The wickedest problem that Mike never solved was his health. Since retiring from PFD, it was one physical crisis after another—such a shame that Mobile Medicine chews people up. But like so many others in our shared orbit, Mike offers the latest evidence that only the good die young. (I’m increasingly convinced that life is an existential point system: the deep-thinking intellectuals, the sweet and memorable, and the beautiful of soul all cashed in too early. The horrible people, by contrast, make their points last and last….)
He was slated to join us at the Mobile Medical Innovation Roundtable in December, but had to cancel just a week before, when he landed in the hospital due to a cardiac crisis. Then he threw out his back. Then a stroke finally took him.
If there’s any solace to be found here, it’s that I sensed we might not get time for that drink after all, and I made sure to interview him for JEMS; feature him (not just words, but face, too) in a presentation for EMS World and the National Association of Mobile Integrated Health Providers; and introduce him to my friend David Moffitt, a similarly thoughtful Fire and EMS professional, who found himself likewise engaged in hours-long discussions about deep and necessary ideas.
These pollinations were important and purposeful: Mike’s words need to be known; they need to studied. His admonitions (as I learned) should be heeded. He made the world better and smarter.
I regret little in this life, but one that I’ll carry with me is this: Mike never finished the children’s book he started years ago, I believe as a gift and testament to his daughter. He told me about it and showed me drafts. I bothered him, during most of our phone calls, to “get going, man.” Tomorrow isn’t guaranteed.
I have and treasure collections of papers that Mike wrote, talks and presentations that he delivered, but to see his name on a children’s book, all love and color and sweet joy, would have been his magnum opus. I don’t know how many others knew about this effort-in-process, so I feel like I’m divulging a little secret. But it’s a secret we won’t get to share—not fully—anymore.
I therefore want you to know that our friend—one of the first people I met in this profession, one of the few who traveled seamlessly between the National EMS Management Association, the International Association of EMS Chiefs, and many other collections of dedicated people who rarely agree except to be universally glad when he showed up, like an emissary of all that is possible if we work together—had this piece of childish art buried inside.
What he wanted to do when he retired, after all that he had seen and done, the people he had taught, the lives that he touch, the wicked problems he sought to solve, the conundrums that kept him up at night, the family he adored, the cuisine he crafted, the places he sought to travel…was to write a book for kids.
We need more Mike Touchstones in this world, and I cannot wait to talk to this one again.
