Wednesday August 20 – Losing one of your own
Mike Evans moved into Lansing Reilly to join our Jesuit community in mid-summer. Mike is a native Detroiter and he and the Jesuit midwest leadership decided that UDM’s campus, where he studied (BA – English & History; MA Philosophy), would be a good place for him to get substantial medical treatment for a major cyst. We Jesuits at Six Mile Road welcomed him and his vibrant presence among us — we told one another stories, many of his related to the decades he lived and worked in Africa with the Jesuit Refugee Service and as treasurer of The African Assistancy (Jesuit-language for a large region). He also served 4 years as president of Loyola High School on 5 Mile Road, one of the two Jesuit high schools in Detroit.
He had surgery on August 25 and in the week that followed he emerged from and was moved back into Intensive Care several times. We were all waiting through this tedious recuperation process with him. Until this Labor Day Monday when an ICU intervention failed to control hemorrhaging. He died about 8:00 pm. He had just turned 60. (N.b., You can find his wake, funeral and burial information at the end of this post).
In mid-August I posted a new Mary Oliver poem, “When Death Comes.” A number of the readers of the Work Day list wrote to tell me how the poem moved them. I’m posting it again to honor Mike who, I like to think, lived as a warrior, mostly in and about Africa and about inner city Detroit. Best to read the poem out loud.
We miss Mike.
john staudenmaier sj
Today’s Post
“When Death Comes”
When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.
Mary Oliver New and Selected Poems, Vol.1
Mike will be buried from Gesu Parish, just across McNichols Road.
Wake:
Friday, September 5, 2014
2:00 – 4:30 p.m.
Prayer Service at 3:00 p.m.
and
6:30 – 9:00 p.m.
Prayer Service at 7:00 p.m.
Gesu Parish
17180 Oak Drive
Detroit, MI 48221
Funeral Mass:
Saturday, September 6, 2014
10:00 a.m.
Gesu Parish
17180 Oak Drive
Detroit, MI 48221
Burial:
Saturday, September 6, 2014
3:00 p.m.
Colombiere Center
9075 Big Lake Road
Clarkston, MI 48346
May Fr. Evans Rest in Peace. I always enjoyed his correspondence over the years regarding his Africa mission work, and the annual Christmas ornament from Africa.
He was a University of Detroit Mercy Titan.
Mark Mikula.
Rochester Hills, Michigan
I just learned of Fr. Mike Evans’ passing. Mike was a high school and University of Detroit Michigan friend. We had one history class together in 1973. It would be an understatement to say I admired his work in education and missionary work in Africa. Regretably, I had not spoken to Mike in many years. I was not aware of his recent work assignments in the U.S. Today I am praying for his sister Mary Jo Evans (my Bishop Foley Catholic High School classmate), his three additional sisters and his entire family.