Between Two Worlds: Mika

Mika. Her name was Mika Ellen Orzech. She was my friend.

I first met Mika quite a few years ago when I was posting on Facebook. Mika was a human rights activist, Internet News Provider, and started the Facebook Group “Trans Violence News” many years ago.

Since I was already blogging about the Transgender Day of Remembrance, I asked Mika if I could join her group.

She agreed and after a year or so she asked if I would be willing to be an administrator of that group. I said yes. That began a friendship with Mika, even though it was mostly online, that I will never forget.

It was also a very troubling time in both of our lives. The presidency changed hands after the 2016 election. A very conservative man was elected. He was against our LGBT rights. Including our trans rights.

Almost immediately the transgender deaths started going up and continued to go up, every. single. year that he was president. Yes, mostly trans people of color in our country. But so many more worldwide.

Many were trans women who had to resort to sex work in able to pay for their individual transitions. They usually had no access to any health care that was necessary in their transition.

The work that Mika and others like Anna Jayne Metcalfe did, continually searching for and posting trans deaths, was intense. When you see and post about world-wide trans deaths daily, for years, some incredibly violent, it takes its toll.

Physically, mentally and of course emotionally. It took its toll on me and it triggered a lot of my PTSD. Being a lot older than Mika, I resigned from the group, and subsequently left Facebook permanently.

But I did stay in touch with Mika. It was she who convinced me to to join another social media group, MeWe. She had joined in 2016. I joined in January of 2019. Ironically, three years almost to the day when she departed this world.

Mika Ellen Orzech was only 62 years old when she crossed over the veil in death on January 25, 2022. It was a Tuesday. She passed away just 6 days before her and her longtime partner Mandy’s 11 year anniversary.

From Mandy Orzech on MeWe the day after Mika crossed over.

“I am saddened to announce that Mika Ellen Orzech passed away last night after 9:30pm. She was the love of my life and my soulmate. She was my everything. She helped me deal with this evil and cruel world. Now I have no idea how I am going to live without her. She was a wonderful human being. She taught me how to love unconditionally”………….Mandy Orzech

Yes, it was a Tuesday. It was an anniversary of periodic posts about “Tea with Death”. Like me, Mika was not afraid of Death. She embraced it. And wrote about it once in awhile.

Here are some of Mika’s posts about that. Quoted with permission from Mandy, in Mika’s words.

Published April 26, 2020
“I sometimes have tea with Death. We have some interesting discussions. Nice guy, just lonely.”

Published May 13, 2020
“So it was another ‘Tea With Death’ Tuesday. He seemed pretty tired. Tough job with endless hours. I recommended that he retire, but he said he can’t afford to in this economy. Grim humor… it’s going around”.

Published Thursday, 9th December 2021
“When the magick is gone, you are already dead.”

Mika also wrote poetry and some of those also dealt with her friend, Death.  I believe she knew that Death would be coming. Way sooner than I or Mandy would have realized at the time.

TEA & BISCUITS
If you reach into the dustbin of death,
Do not be surprised by what you find there.
Nightmares and remorse, regrets and fear,
Things that no human can bear.
Meanwhile, Death and I drink tea, eat biscuits,
And we make grim jokes. We chuckle.
And we both know my sandglass is running out.
But the tea and biscuits are rather good.
~ Mika Ellen Orzech
Published December 9, 2020.

Published November 3, 2021
“Some people find my poetry morbid. It’s really not. It’s about grasping the concept of gradual temporal separation (death), and what you do in the meantime. Death actually enjoys my poems if served with Earl Gray tea and biscotti”.

Mika was always interested in learning lots of new things. She delved pretty deeply into some of them. Here’s a few.

“Every day of my life is pretty much a learning curve. And there is so much to learn! Never stop reading, never stop learning. To me, that’s the whole point of life: reading and learning”.

“My infatuation with systemic collapse is twofold: I’m watching the world I used to know fall into definitive decline… and I’m not a fool, I see my health following the same route. Again, my obsession with collapsing reality vectors. Basically, the second law of thermodynamics (entropy) is 100% unavoidable. All systems collapse eventually. It’s just physics.”

“The universe is simply a myriad of semi-independent micro-systems all trying to survive. There is a limited amount of energy available (in theory), so all the micro-systems all must compete against each other for that energy. This is thermodynamics 101”.

“So a micro-system must establish dominance to survive, or it will not find sufficient energy. Human beings are essentially micro-systems. Interdependent, yet still locked in a fight with each other”.

“As resources (energy) diminish, the more vicious the fight for those resources becomes”.

“Earth is a planet. It has limited resources. They are rapidly becoming diminished. Work the rest of the equation out”.

Before Mika moved to Knoxville, TN, she was very involved with Arlington Street Church, a Unitarian Universalist church in Boston, MA.

Two years before Mika transitioned she did a couple of sermons at Arlington Street Church, under her former name, “Michael Orzech”. Here is a link to a sermon she did from July 12, 2009.  The name of the sermon was, “Hope”. Very relevant in the troubling times we live in today.

I’m so happy that I got to know Mika, in all of the ways I did. Even through the worst of times, dealing with transgender deaths the way we both did, she somehow found that humor helped her cope with all of it.

I think this post to see how she used humor explains it quite well.

Published September 15, 2020
“Damn it… Death is in the doorway and I haven’t brewed the tea yet. Out of Earl Grey, we will have to do with green tea. May not be a bad idea. Layers of humor there”.

But eventually it did take an incredible toll on her Spirit, mental well being, and finally, her life in this world. But I for one, like Mandy, will never forget her.

Who is remembered, lives. Lives forever in our memories. Rest forever in peace and power Mika. Until we meet again, sometime…in the future. Blessed Be Mika. So Mote It Be.  )0(