The Year I Died Twice. Part VI of The Mouse That Remembered Me (2023)
Mouse 6
No flowers.
No sirens.
Just two quiet funerals.
One in April,
one in September,
and a mouse who refused to let me disappear
.
1) The move that didn’t move me
Late 2022, I said Washington.
Bellingham on paper.
Everett on a whim.
Bham guest spot, Jan.
I booked the guest spots, pointed the car north,
stopped in Anaheim with a girl who laughed easy.
Ears pierced for Mickey heads.
Pancakes for two.
Castle at my back.
Instincts still alive enough to drag me forward.
I thought I was building a life.
Really, I was laying breadcrumbs.
(My blood had been screaming since Iraq. I just couldn’t hear it yet.)
2) April — first funeral
I drew the Lady on April 17.
Six hours of pressure and prayer,
reaching for the last 5% I used to know by feel.
It didn’t come back.
But something stayed in the paper.
She kept it.
the one that lasts
I left lighter in a way that wasn’t good.
The first death wasn’t dramatic.
Just a click of a door inside my skull.
3) Mickey stops being merch
After that, Mickey and I stopped being separate.
Not a shirt. Not an icebreaker.
A metronome.
On the counter: Mickey mug.
On the wall: Mickey flash.
In the car: Mickey riding shotgun.
On pancakes, plates, posters.
AI sketches. Glitched circles. Pixel drag.
Every version of him reflected a version of me trying to stay.
You can track my oxygen by how often he appears.
The mouse remembers what I can’t.
4) May — diagnosis that wasn’t
Doctor’s office. Numbers pointing south.
“Low T,” they said, small enough to fix.
Hemorrhoids, too. Surgery scheduled.
Containable. I wanted that word.
Two days later I was at Disneyland.
Light pants. California sun. Crowds.
I bled through them.
My brain was on fire and the mask slipped.
Cervo gave me his jacket to tie around my waist
and Art bought me a balloon.
That smile is the bravest I could do.
We joked about me looking like a make a wish kid.
I laughed it off,
the kind of laugh that ends a conversation.
TRT dulled the signal.
Let me keep moving while the floor gave way.
5) Colby Ave — announcement by mouse
The tour hit Everett.
Colby Ave made the offer.
I said yes because yes is momentum.
If they didn’t know me here, I’d introduce myself the only way I knew how:
Mickey Day.
announcement by mouse
Balloons. Poster.
Flash I bled for.
A shirt I designed when my brain felt analog and stuck.
greeter
People showed. We made a little noise.
I took photos of everyone.
Not one of me.
It shouldn’t matter.
It mattered.
6) Between deaths
Summer was an empty house with my name on the lease.
No friends. No horizon.
Then the calendar filled.
DR first.
Heat, palms, ocean.
I smiled for the camera. I was gone inside.
Milwaukee after that. Old jokes with my oldest friend.
They landed like coins in water.
Colby was under renovation, so I floated to a guest spot.
A girl visited from Utah.
We made plans like we believed in them.
Tri-Cities convention. Long hours.
I won second place for Judy Garland.
trophy with no pulse
Everyone cheered.
My chest was silent.
It was the lowest I’ve ever felt without being sad.
Not bleak. Not dramatic.
Just… tired of everything.
September went.
I bought a green tux.
I drew a Mickey sheet for November.
I ate a salad and photographed it
proof of life
because I needed proof I was still participating.
This is what the second funeral looks like:
trophies on tables,
hands in pockets,
a smile that can’t remember where it lives.
6.5) What it looked like
People called me distant. Detached. Cold.
Checked out.
One ex diagnosed it: borderline.
Told Sarina I needed mood stabilizers.
What no one saw was how hard I was working to stay still.
how every disagreement felt like too many tabs open.
I wasn’t avoiding the fire;
I couldn’t afford the oxygen to feed it.
We never fought. That’s what she missed.
She called the stillness dangerous—
but it was restraint, not rage.
I wasn’t holding anything back.
I didn’t have anything left.
My brain was flickering.
Confused. Scared. Tired.
Not just physically—soul-tired.
Sleep didn’t fix it.
So I chased the night, the only hours where nothing was expected of me.
I was in a prison.
And I kept the bars pretty for everyone else.
Now that I’m out, I see the difference:
that version of me wasn’t unwell—
he was surviving, quietly.
The rage they projected was never mine.
It was their fear
of what it looks like when someone doesn’t perform pain
in a way they recognize.
7) November — a tux and a cartoon
Marine Corps Ball.
Green velvet jacket. Perfect date.
The kind of night you’re supposed to remember.
green velvet, borrowed smile
I smiled in the elevator.
Smiled for the photo booth.
Didn’t text Master P back enough to deserve the warmth he gave me anyway.
My mouth forgot where it lives in pictures.
A few blocks and a lifetime later there was Fremont Street.
Sequins. Neon.
Mickey in a bow tie.
He put an arm around me like he always does.
I didn’t have to say who I was.
He already knew.
8) Mickey Day, again
November 18th.
My little cathedral to a cartoon mouse.
Flash pinned up like prayers.
Kids laughing. Adults remembering.
cathedral
It worked.
It should’ve been enough.
I drove home hopeful,
the way you do when the lights are still warm.
Christmas morning I made pancakes.
Put the mouse back on a plate.
Sat across from someone who wanted to be there.
For a minute, the room could hold me.
For a minute, it did.
pancakes for two