Maggie Farley
A family friend, John Daley of Colorado Public Radio, did this lovely story.
https://www.cpr.org/2020/04/01/denver/.../-maybe-to-goodbye/
How A Denver Family Found Itself Saying Goodbye To COVID-19-Infected Father Over Video Chat
By John Daley
April 1, 2020
Play audio
LISTEN NOW
17min 37sec
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Mike Farley's family marked his passing with an Irish wake held over Zoom. His brother, children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews all joined in to remember him.
Courtesy of the Farley family.
Mike Farley's family marked his passing with an Irish wake held over Zoom. His brother, children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews all joined in to remember him.
“I’m sensing that there's this peculiar opinion that somehow this is not going to affect us.”
On Monday March 23, I was working on a story about hospitals preparing for the coronavirus. An emergency room doctor in a big Colorado health system was telling me they were seeing a surge, a doubling each day, in COVID-19 patients.
But, he said, many Coloradans were still in denial and hadn’t yet considered how COVID-19 might impact them.
“If you think for one second that you're walking around, and you're not going to be touched by this, you're going to be touched by this.”
Just after that call, my phone started humming. It was a message from buddies of mine who I grew up with in Denver. Mike Farley had died. “He contracted COVID,” one friend texted.
I’d been dealing with COVID-19 every day for weeks, covering the story as CPR’s health reporter, but I hadn’t known anyone who’d yet gotten sick from it.
Though I hadn’t seen him in some time, I’d known Mike Farley since I was a kid. Mike’s wife Nancy taught my brother how to play piano. His son John and I grew up swimming and playing soccer together. John and I were high school classmates at Manual High in Denver, part of a tight group that remains close friends today. And I knew Mike’s daughter Maggie, who is a couple of years younger than John, as well.
What I remember best about Mike was his warmth and kindness, always there after a swim meet or soccer game to say “Good job!” or ask about how my folks were doing.
The family called my colleague Ryan Warner to tell him -- and his audience on Colorado Matters -- their story via cell phone. In the age of the coronavirus, many of us will be touched by stories just like theirs. Nancy and Maggie joined Ryan from Mike and Nancy’s Denver home, John joined from Boulder. All three were self-quarantined due to their contact with Mike.
Courtesy of the Farley family.
Mike and Nancy Farley in a picture shared with CPR News by the Farley family.
Maggie lives outside of D.C. and said, “I just couldn't imagine being quarantined there and knowing that she (Nancy) was grieving alone here, and having to do everything that you have to face after death. So I'm just really glad I'm here, even though she won't let me hug her. She's making me stay six feet away.”
Favorite stories flowed about Mike, a retired lawyer, lover of classical music, avid reader and advocate for those experiencing homelessness.
Nancy said Mike worked on housing for about 30 years through the Archdiocese of Denver. “That really was his passion,” she said. “He loved to drive by the sites that they had built and see families out in the yards playing.”
John remembered coming down from their neighborhood in Park Hill and visiting his dad at his office downtown as a teen. They’d go to Duffy’s Bar and Grill and walk the 16th Street Mall. “What happened just amazed me, because Dad couldn't walk but 10, 20 feet at a time without someone saying, ‘Hi, Mike.’ ‘Hi, Mike.’ ‘Hi, Mike.’"
Maggie recalled her dad’s “stubborn sense of justice.” Besides fighting for low-income housing, he also pushed his firm, Holland and Hart, to diversify, and took to the U.S. Supreme Court a case that ultimately mandated court-ordered busing in Denver.
Courtesy of the Farley family.
Mike Farley as a boy.
When cleaning out his desk this week, Maggie found what she called another symbol of his stubborn sense of justice: a parking ticket that he’d been fighting for three years. “He felt like it was not fair, and so he was not going to pay it,” she said.
Mike Farley’s illness came on fast and out of the blue in early March.
Nancy and Mike were watching a movie at their house with friends when he started to cough violently and couldn’t stop. Everyone in the room looked at each other. “Well, we were extremely worried. We thought, ‘Oh my goodness, maybe this is the dreaded virus,’" Nancy said.
The friends left immediately. Mike finally calmed down a little bit later, but from then on, his cough just got worse. He developed a slight fever. They called the doctor, who had him come in, and prescribed antibiotics.
Mike came home and just didn't get better.
The next time they called the doctor, about five days later, they were told to please take him to the emergency room.,
"Which I did,” Nancy said, “and that's the last I saw of him.”.
That snowy day, a Thursday, Nancy took Mike to Swedish Medical Center in Englewood. Mike was admitted at the front desk, and due to early visitor restrictions imposed to slow the spread of the new coronavirus in the state, she was told she’d have to wait in her car. “I think people were, minute-by-minute, finding that they had to apply new rules to everything,” said Nancy.
After about an hour, Nancy returned to the front desk. “I said, ‘What is going on?’ Finally, somebody did come back and say, "We're admitting Mike to the hospital because he has bilateral pneumonia.’"
It was the illness commonly associated with COVID-19.
They spoke on the phone a little while later. Mike was desperate for some books, including one called The Bishop’s Pawn, “probably a mystery,” Nancy said. He only had about 20 pages left in one of the books, and Nancy brought over three to the hospital.
A kind nurse taught Mike how to FaceTime on his cell phone, enabling the whole family to connect. Soon, Mike’s oxygen levels were falling, dangerously low, and he was moved to an intensive care isolation unit and got hooked up to a respirator.
“He explained to me that he didn't think it was good news at all, that it really means that we need to say our goodbyes, just in case. And so we did,” said John. “It was very difficult to see him through FaceTime, struggling to breathe, while he so desperately wanted also to talk and connect and tell me how much he loved me, how much he wants me to look after my mom, and how much he loves my sister and her family. So that was the end of the call.”
Sunday night, they had another five-minute exchange. But Mike’s condition was on a roller coaster, very notable in many COVID-19 cases. The day had started out with some promise. His oxygen levels had crept back up, but by day’s end they’d started to drop again.
“He reached out and said that he really didn't think he'd be around tomorrow, and I said, ‘Oh Dad, I look forward to FaceTiming and seeing you tomorrow morning,’” said John.
“And he said, very directly, that he didn't think that was going to happen, but he hoped so. That was the last time we spoke.”
Mike understood the outcome for people at his age, with his situation having “a little bit of an underlying lung condition anyway” was not good, Maggie said.
“He clearly had a sense of the way things were going. He said, ‘This is not the end-of-life situation I hoped for. This is really hard,’" Maggie said. “And he said he felt like his life was complete, but he just wasn't ready to hand it over yet. He did make a very brave choice in the end. He chose not to be put on a ventilator.”
She said it would be very much her dad’s way to decide to open up the use of a ventilator for another patient.
Courtesy of the Farley family.
Mike Farley, in an image shared with CPR News by the Farley family.
“But I think we regard it as a gift to us, actually. I think he was envisioning a future when he would come home and just be stuck on oxygen and be kind of a burden to the family and not be able to go anywhere,” Maggie said. “He just decided he would rather have a better life rather than a longer life.”
On Monday, five days after entering the hospital, Mike Farley died.
And like many sick patients in the COVID-19 era, he was alone. His last rites were administered remotely.
“It had a surreal quality to it, because it was happening over a phone,” said John. Mike’s son said he was grateful that the family could connect that way.
“I could feel all of us breathing, talking, being on the line together, and that brought great comfort. And I just projected, and hoped that the projection of that, that Dad truly felt it and knew it. I think he did. But I found it to be a, yeah, a very surreal experience, to say goodbye that way.”
“When he died, I thought it was a tragedy,” Maggie said. “Even though we got to listen to the last rites over the nurse's phone, I felt so sad for him, because he was essentially dying alone and I know he didn't want to.”
Reflecting on it a week later, Maggie thinks the Farleys were actually lucky. Because within that week the number of COVID-19 cases in the U.S. had shot up by five times what they were. At this rate, there could be a million cases by Easter. As the numbers skyrocket, she said, nurses won’t have ventilators to put people on or the time to make phone calls.
“There is not even going to be equipment, maybe, for the doctors and nurses, and they could end up victims themselves,” Maggie said. “So there's going to be a whole lot more people dying alone, and there are going to be a whole lot more doctors and nurses who don't have masks and gloves if we don't fix this. And I think that is absolutely criminal. We saw this coming and we were utterly unprepared.”
The Farleys wanted to share Mike’s story to underscore the serious, mysterious and super-contagious nature of COVID-19.
Courtesy of the Farley family.
Mike Farley, flanked by his wife, his children and grandchildren. Front row from left to right: Karen Farley, John’s wife; Aria Brauchli, Maggie and Marcus’s daughter; Maggie Farley; Zoe Brauchli, Maggie and Marcus’s daughter. Back row left to right: John Farley, Nancy Farley, Mike Farley and Marcus Brauchli, Maggie’s husband.
And the importance of taking all the recommended mitigation measures, of washing hands, staying home, keeping your distance. “If we can save one life we’ve done something great in Dad’s name,” said John.
Still, when a loved one dies from COVID-19, the survivors are left with ‘what if?’
Maggie, who was doing a lot of traveling before she visited her parents and Mike got sick, has lain awake at night wondering if she could have given it to him.
In her goodbye call she said "’Dad, if I gave this to you, please forgive me. I was trying to be so careful.’ And he absolved me. I mean, that was a real gift. And he said, ‘You did not give this to me. It doesn't add up, and I could have gotten it anywhere. At the doctor's office or at the grocery store,’" she said.
“We've all had those dark moments, wondering where he got it and if we brought it to him.”
Research emerged this week showing a high number of those infected with the new coronavirus may be asymptomatic, meaning they may not show symptoms. That makes it hard, if not impossible, to know who spread the virus to whom.
“I think it's a question we can never answer,” she said, noting it’s “so characteristic of my dad that he forgave me and he tried to talk me out of it.”
A few days after Mike Farley died, his loved ones joined together via the online video conference site Zoom. They held an Irish wake, which John described as an all-out celebration of one's life, typical to the Irish, with great amounts of laughter, great amounts of crying, and a very funny dark humor. “It's a blunt humor and it rolls around between family members for hours,” said John.
Farleys from Oregon, Farleys from Montana, Farleys from Wyoming shared recollections, with a lot of fun and a lot of tears. The favorite line came from a cousin, Justin, who said "’This is the first wake I've been to that didn't require pants.’"
It seemed a fitting farewell for a man who, when asked what he wanted for his birthday or Christmas would always say “All I want is love and a few kind words.”
“He is getting everything that he wanted in abundance,” said Maggie.
https://www.cpr.org/2020/04/01/denver/.../-maybe-to-goodbye/
How A Denver Family Found Itself Saying Goodbye To COVID-19-Infected Father Over Video Chat
By John Daley
April 1, 2020
Play audio
LISTEN NOW
17min 37sec
SHARE:
Mike Farley's family marked his passing with an Irish wake held over Zoom. His brother, children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews all joined in to remember him.
Courtesy of the Farley family.
Mike Farley's family marked his passing with an Irish wake held over Zoom. His brother, children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews all joined in to remember him.
“I’m sensing that there's this peculiar opinion that somehow this is not going to affect us.”
On Monday March 23, I was working on a story about hospitals preparing for the coronavirus. An emergency room doctor in a big Colorado health system was telling me they were seeing a surge, a doubling each day, in COVID-19 patients.
But, he said, many Coloradans were still in denial and hadn’t yet considered how COVID-19 might impact them.
“If you think for one second that you're walking around, and you're not going to be touched by this, you're going to be touched by this.”
Just after that call, my phone started humming. It was a message from buddies of mine who I grew up with in Denver. Mike Farley had died. “He contracted COVID,” one friend texted.
I’d been dealing with COVID-19 every day for weeks, covering the story as CPR’s health reporter, but I hadn’t known anyone who’d yet gotten sick from it.
Though I hadn’t seen him in some time, I’d known Mike Farley since I was a kid. Mike’s wife Nancy taught my brother how to play piano. His son John and I grew up swimming and playing soccer together. John and I were high school classmates at Manual High in Denver, part of a tight group that remains close friends today. And I knew Mike’s daughter Maggie, who is a couple of years younger than John, as well.
What I remember best about Mike was his warmth and kindness, always there after a swim meet or soccer game to say “Good job!” or ask about how my folks were doing.
The family called my colleague Ryan Warner to tell him -- and his audience on Colorado Matters -- their story via cell phone. In the age of the coronavirus, many of us will be touched by stories just like theirs. Nancy and Maggie joined Ryan from Mike and Nancy’s Denver home, John joined from Boulder. All three were self-quarantined due to their contact with Mike.
Courtesy of the Farley family.
Mike and Nancy Farley in a picture shared with CPR News by the Farley family.
Maggie lives outside of D.C. and said, “I just couldn't imagine being quarantined there and knowing that she (Nancy) was grieving alone here, and having to do everything that you have to face after death. So I'm just really glad I'm here, even though she won't let me hug her. She's making me stay six feet away.”
Favorite stories flowed about Mike, a retired lawyer, lover of classical music, avid reader and advocate for those experiencing homelessness.
Nancy said Mike worked on housing for about 30 years through the Archdiocese of Denver. “That really was his passion,” she said. “He loved to drive by the sites that they had built and see families out in the yards playing.”
John remembered coming down from their neighborhood in Park Hill and visiting his dad at his office downtown as a teen. They’d go to Duffy’s Bar and Grill and walk the 16th Street Mall. “What happened just amazed me, because Dad couldn't walk but 10, 20 feet at a time without someone saying, ‘Hi, Mike.’ ‘Hi, Mike.’ ‘Hi, Mike.’"
Maggie recalled her dad’s “stubborn sense of justice.” Besides fighting for low-income housing, he also pushed his firm, Holland and Hart, to diversify, and took to the U.S. Supreme Court a case that ultimately mandated court-ordered busing in Denver.
Courtesy of the Farley family.
Mike Farley as a boy.
When cleaning out his desk this week, Maggie found what she called another symbol of his stubborn sense of justice: a parking ticket that he’d been fighting for three years. “He felt like it was not fair, and so he was not going to pay it,” she said.
Mike Farley’s illness came on fast and out of the blue in early March.
Nancy and Mike were watching a movie at their house with friends when he started to cough violently and couldn’t stop. Everyone in the room looked at each other. “Well, we were extremely worried. We thought, ‘Oh my goodness, maybe this is the dreaded virus,’" Nancy said.
The friends left immediately. Mike finally calmed down a little bit later, but from then on, his cough just got worse. He developed a slight fever. They called the doctor, who had him come in, and prescribed antibiotics.
Mike came home and just didn't get better.
The next time they called the doctor, about five days later, they were told to please take him to the emergency room.,
"Which I did,” Nancy said, “and that's the last I saw of him.”.
That snowy day, a Thursday, Nancy took Mike to Swedish Medical Center in Englewood. Mike was admitted at the front desk, and due to early visitor restrictions imposed to slow the spread of the new coronavirus in the state, she was told she’d have to wait in her car. “I think people were, minute-by-minute, finding that they had to apply new rules to everything,” said Nancy.
After about an hour, Nancy returned to the front desk. “I said, ‘What is going on?’ Finally, somebody did come back and say, "We're admitting Mike to the hospital because he has bilateral pneumonia.’"
It was the illness commonly associated with COVID-19.
They spoke on the phone a little while later. Mike was desperate for some books, including one called The Bishop’s Pawn, “probably a mystery,” Nancy said. He only had about 20 pages left in one of the books, and Nancy brought over three to the hospital.
A kind nurse taught Mike how to FaceTime on his cell phone, enabling the whole family to connect. Soon, Mike’s oxygen levels were falling, dangerously low, and he was moved to an intensive care isolation unit and got hooked up to a respirator.
“He explained to me that he didn't think it was good news at all, that it really means that we need to say our goodbyes, just in case. And so we did,” said John. “It was very difficult to see him through FaceTime, struggling to breathe, while he so desperately wanted also to talk and connect and tell me how much he loved me, how much he wants me to look after my mom, and how much he loves my sister and her family. So that was the end of the call.”
Sunday night, they had another five-minute exchange. But Mike’s condition was on a roller coaster, very notable in many COVID-19 cases. The day had started out with some promise. His oxygen levels had crept back up, but by day’s end they’d started to drop again.
“He reached out and said that he really didn't think he'd be around tomorrow, and I said, ‘Oh Dad, I look forward to FaceTiming and seeing you tomorrow morning,’” said John.
“And he said, very directly, that he didn't think that was going to happen, but he hoped so. That was the last time we spoke.”
Mike understood the outcome for people at his age, with his situation having “a little bit of an underlying lung condition anyway” was not good, Maggie said.
“He clearly had a sense of the way things were going. He said, ‘This is not the end-of-life situation I hoped for. This is really hard,’" Maggie said. “And he said he felt like his life was complete, but he just wasn't ready to hand it over yet. He did make a very brave choice in the end. He chose not to be put on a ventilator.”
She said it would be very much her dad’s way to decide to open up the use of a ventilator for another patient.
Courtesy of the Farley family.
Mike Farley, in an image shared with CPR News by the Farley family.
“But I think we regard it as a gift to us, actually. I think he was envisioning a future when he would come home and just be stuck on oxygen and be kind of a burden to the family and not be able to go anywhere,” Maggie said. “He just decided he would rather have a better life rather than a longer life.”
On Monday, five days after entering the hospital, Mike Farley died.
And like many sick patients in the COVID-19 era, he was alone. His last rites were administered remotely.
“It had a surreal quality to it, because it was happening over a phone,” said John. Mike’s son said he was grateful that the family could connect that way.
“I could feel all of us breathing, talking, being on the line together, and that brought great comfort. And I just projected, and hoped that the projection of that, that Dad truly felt it and knew it. I think he did. But I found it to be a, yeah, a very surreal experience, to say goodbye that way.”
“When he died, I thought it was a tragedy,” Maggie said. “Even though we got to listen to the last rites over the nurse's phone, I felt so sad for him, because he was essentially dying alone and I know he didn't want to.”
Reflecting on it a week later, Maggie thinks the Farleys were actually lucky. Because within that week the number of COVID-19 cases in the U.S. had shot up by five times what they were. At this rate, there could be a million cases by Easter. As the numbers skyrocket, she said, nurses won’t have ventilators to put people on or the time to make phone calls.
“There is not even going to be equipment, maybe, for the doctors and nurses, and they could end up victims themselves,” Maggie said. “So there's going to be a whole lot more people dying alone, and there are going to be a whole lot more doctors and nurses who don't have masks and gloves if we don't fix this. And I think that is absolutely criminal. We saw this coming and we were utterly unprepared.”
The Farleys wanted to share Mike’s story to underscore the serious, mysterious and super-contagious nature of COVID-19.
Courtesy of the Farley family.
Mike Farley, flanked by his wife, his children and grandchildren. Front row from left to right: Karen Farley, John’s wife; Aria Brauchli, Maggie and Marcus’s daughter; Maggie Farley; Zoe Brauchli, Maggie and Marcus’s daughter. Back row left to right: John Farley, Nancy Farley, Mike Farley and Marcus Brauchli, Maggie’s husband.
And the importance of taking all the recommended mitigation measures, of washing hands, staying home, keeping your distance. “If we can save one life we’ve done something great in Dad’s name,” said John.
Still, when a loved one dies from COVID-19, the survivors are left with ‘what if?’
Maggie, who was doing a lot of traveling before she visited her parents and Mike got sick, has lain awake at night wondering if she could have given it to him.
In her goodbye call she said "’Dad, if I gave this to you, please forgive me. I was trying to be so careful.’ And he absolved me. I mean, that was a real gift. And he said, ‘You did not give this to me. It doesn't add up, and I could have gotten it anywhere. At the doctor's office or at the grocery store,’" she said.
“We've all had those dark moments, wondering where he got it and if we brought it to him.”
Research emerged this week showing a high number of those infected with the new coronavirus may be asymptomatic, meaning they may not show symptoms. That makes it hard, if not impossible, to know who spread the virus to whom.
“I think it's a question we can never answer,” she said, noting it’s “so characteristic of my dad that he forgave me and he tried to talk me out of it.”
A few days after Mike Farley died, his loved ones joined together via the online video conference site Zoom. They held an Irish wake, which John described as an all-out celebration of one's life, typical to the Irish, with great amounts of laughter, great amounts of crying, and a very funny dark humor. “It's a blunt humor and it rolls around between family members for hours,” said John.
Farleys from Oregon, Farleys from Montana, Farleys from Wyoming shared recollections, with a lot of fun and a lot of tears. The favorite line came from a cousin, Justin, who said "’This is the first wake I've been to that didn't require pants.’"
It seemed a fitting farewell for a man who, when asked what he wanted for his birthday or Christmas would always say “All I want is love and a few kind words.”
“He is getting everything that he wanted in abundance,” said Maggie.
Maggie Farley
The Denver Post obituary caught his humor and made us smile:
Denver attorney Mike Farley, a low-income housing advocate, dies of coronavirus
Coronavirus kills 87-year-old jokester and avid reader
https://www.denverpost.com/2020/03/30/mi/.../ry-coronavirus/
Denver attorney Mike Farley, a low-income housing advocate, dies of coronavirus
Coronavirus kills 87-year-old jokester and avid reader
https://www.denverpost.com/2020/03/30/mi/.../ry-coronavirus/
Maggie Farley
Mike Farley didn’t complain on the way to the emergency room the morning of March 19. He joked.
And he called his younger brother, Phil, waking him.
“He had this really great sense of humor, dark humor. He was always quick with a pun. Some were terrible; some were great,” Phil Farley said. “When I talked to him for the last time, he said, ‘Well, it looks like you’re gonna have to clean up after me.’”
“I wish I would have replied quick enough to say, ‘Oh, does that mean I get your liquor cabinet?’” Phil Farley added.
Swedish Medical Center admitted Farley that day with a fever and a persistent cough. His wife of 59 years, Nancy, said he panicked. Not because of the illness but because he hadn’t finished the book he had been reading.
“He had me bring him several books so he would not be without a book in his hand,” Nancy Farley said.
On Monday, March 23, Mike Farley died, one of Colorado’s 51 reported deaths from COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the coronavirus. He was 87.
Farley’s family rallied. Their close bond kept them strong through his illness and it keeps them strong in his absence. But they mourn for their lost brother, husband and father while urging others in Colorado and across the country to take the virus seriously.
Even at a recent, virtual wake for Farley, the jokes continued.
“The best line was from my cousin who said, ‘I think this is the first wake I’ve been to where you don’t have to have your pants on,’” said Mike Farley’s daughter, Maggie Farley.
But for all the laughter, his work was serious business. He spent decades as an estate attorney in Denver and as an advocate for racial equality, his family said. He was also a strong proponent of providing housing for low-income families, serving as a founding board member for the Archdiocesan Housing Committee.
He was a principled man, even in the face of adversity. Maggie Farley, who lives in Maryland with her husband and children, said some opposed her father’s campaign for affordable housing so strongly that they threatened his life. But still he carried on because it was the right thing to do.
“He was an Irishman first of all. That means he had a stubborn streak. And he told jokes but they were mostly bad jokes,” Nancy Farley said.
Mike Farley was also a lifelong Democrat, a voracious reader and a family man with a love of life, she added.
“He loved to travel and wanted to see the world,” Nancy Farley said. “He was very outgoing, social … and he just liked to be in conversation with people.”
He didn’t hold a grudge.
Phil Farley recalled the time he borrowed his older brother’s 1955 black Ford and returned it with a damaged transmission.
“It had overdrive, which allows it to coast really easily and you don’t have any of that engine compression slowing you down. You could go as fast as you want,” Phil Farley said. “He didn’t loan me his car again, but he certainly forgave me.”
The family shares fond memories of Farley, laughing often and uplifting one another. Quarantines among different family members aren’t enough to keep them from chatting with one another online.
While communicating with her hospitalized father was difficult, if not impossible, Maggie Farley said one nurse took it upon herself to connect the family as Mike Farley’s time drew near.
“She called us all with her own phone and she let us listen to the last rites and we all got to say our goodbyes,” Maggie Farley said. “That was amazing. We’re just so grateful to her.”
It’s vital that Americans take the coronavirus threat seriously and work to cut its transmission however they can, Nancy Farley said.
“It’s important for us, no matter what our political views are, to rise above all that divide and realize that we’re all so vulnerable,” she said.
And he called his younger brother, Phil, waking him.
“He had this really great sense of humor, dark humor. He was always quick with a pun. Some were terrible; some were great,” Phil Farley said. “When I talked to him for the last time, he said, ‘Well, it looks like you’re gonna have to clean up after me.’”
“I wish I would have replied quick enough to say, ‘Oh, does that mean I get your liquor cabinet?’” Phil Farley added.
Swedish Medical Center admitted Farley that day with a fever and a persistent cough. His wife of 59 years, Nancy, said he panicked. Not because of the illness but because he hadn’t finished the book he had been reading.
“He had me bring him several books so he would not be without a book in his hand,” Nancy Farley said.
On Monday, March 23, Mike Farley died, one of Colorado’s 51 reported deaths from COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the coronavirus. He was 87.
Farley’s family rallied. Their close bond kept them strong through his illness and it keeps them strong in his absence. But they mourn for their lost brother, husband and father while urging others in Colorado and across the country to take the virus seriously.
Even at a recent, virtual wake for Farley, the jokes continued.
“The best line was from my cousin who said, ‘I think this is the first wake I’ve been to where you don’t have to have your pants on,’” said Mike Farley’s daughter, Maggie Farley.
But for all the laughter, his work was serious business. He spent decades as an estate attorney in Denver and as an advocate for racial equality, his family said. He was also a strong proponent of providing housing for low-income families, serving as a founding board member for the Archdiocesan Housing Committee.
He was a principled man, even in the face of adversity. Maggie Farley, who lives in Maryland with her husband and children, said some opposed her father’s campaign for affordable housing so strongly that they threatened his life. But still he carried on because it was the right thing to do.
“He was an Irishman first of all. That means he had a stubborn streak. And he told jokes but they were mostly bad jokes,” Nancy Farley said.
Mike Farley was also a lifelong Democrat, a voracious reader and a family man with a love of life, she added.
“He loved to travel and wanted to see the world,” Nancy Farley said. “He was very outgoing, social … and he just liked to be in conversation with people.”
He didn’t hold a grudge.
Phil Farley recalled the time he borrowed his older brother’s 1955 black Ford and returned it with a damaged transmission.
“It had overdrive, which allows it to coast really easily and you don’t have any of that engine compression slowing you down. You could go as fast as you want,” Phil Farley said. “He didn’t loan me his car again, but he certainly forgave me.”
The family shares fond memories of Farley, laughing often and uplifting one another. Quarantines among different family members aren’t enough to keep them from chatting with one another online.
While communicating with her hospitalized father was difficult, if not impossible, Maggie Farley said one nurse took it upon herself to connect the family as Mike Farley’s time drew near.
“She called us all with her own phone and she let us listen to the last rites and we all got to say our goodbyes,” Maggie Farley said. “That was amazing. We’re just so grateful to her.”
It’s vital that Americans take the coronavirus threat seriously and work to cut its transmission however they can, Nancy Farley said.
“It’s important for us, no matter what our political views are, to rise above all that divide and realize that we’re all so vulnerable,” she said.
Maggie Farley
CBS 4 in Denver did a lovely story about him, and putting a real face on the crisis. https://denver.cbslocal.com/2020/03/25/mi/.../edical-center/
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Maggie Farley
DENVER (CBS4)– Family and friends describe Mike Farley, a Denver attorney, as “one of the good ones,” a man of compassion, integrity and humor. The 87-year-old died Monday of COVID-19 at Swedish Medical Center.
Mike Farley
Mike Farley (credit: CBS)
His daughter, Maggie Farley, said in his final days her father said that,”He felt his life was complete, but I’m not ready to hand it over yet, and that was heartbreaking.”
Farley had become ill about two weeks ago, according to family members, experiencing a low grade fever, but by late last week he couldn’t stop coughing. He was admitted to Swedish Medical Center on Thursday and was dead by Monday.
His wife of 59 years, Nancy, said “in the last days, he never complained.”
Farley was a well-known Denver lawyer who was deeply compassionate towards the homeless and the less fortunate. His family says he had been president of the Denver Foundation and worked with the Archdiocesan Housing Committee for more than 30 years, accomplishments he was most proud of.
(credit: CBS)
His son-in-law, Marcus Brauchli, described Farley as “a man of intelligence, sharp witted humor, forebearance, wisdom and infinite compassion.”
Brauchli said Farley would help others instantly.
His daughter, Maggie, told CBS4, “He always tried to do the right thing and did a lot of good things for a lot of people.”
After getting him to the hospital Thursday, his family was never able to touch or comfort him again as he was placed in isolation due to the contagious virus. Nurses showed Farley how to FaceTime with his family, which he did in his final days.
RELATED: Latest Updates On The Coronavirus Outbreak In Colorado
His daughter said, ”I just told him he had been my guiding light, I’ll hear him and feel him in my heart. I was so lucky to have had him as a father.”
Unsure how he contracted the virus, his daughter is wracked with concern.
Mike Farley
Mike Farley (credit: CBS)
In their last conversation, she told her father, ”If there was a chance I brought this to him, please forgive me.”
She said nurses at Swedish showed Farley the same compassion he showed others during his life, showing him how to use a phone to see family members. The night before he passed, Farley FaceTimed with his family.
“I just told him I loved him and thanked him for a wonderful life together,” said his wife. “And he really wanted to hear everyone’s voice and he heard his grandchildren and that was really important.”
As a chaplain administered last rites, Farley’s family listened by phone.
“They were able to afford him dignity,” said Maggie Farley, ”and he died with grace like he lived his life.”
Now, Farley’s wife and daughter hope his death makes people realize they need to practice social distancing, stay home and follow the directives they receive from medical authorities.
“I think we need to listen to health officials, keep our distance, stay at home and minimize contact,” said his daughter, ”and not listen to politicians who might have different motives.”
His wife said, ”We just can’t put people in jeopardy. We have to stay home and follow the rules.”
Maggie Farley expressed concern that the care her father received in his final days, may soon not be available to other patients.
”So many people are getting sick, they’re not going to have the time or capacity and may not have ventilators or beds. If people can think of the consequences. It’s real, it does happen. Maybe we can do our small part.”
BRIAN MAASS
CBS4 Investigator Brian Maass has been with the station more than 30 years uncovering waste, fraud and corruption.
More from Brian Maass
Mike Farley
Mike Farley (credit: CBS)
His daughter, Maggie Farley, said in his final days her father said that,”He felt his life was complete, but I’m not ready to hand it over yet, and that was heartbreaking.”
Farley had become ill about two weeks ago, according to family members, experiencing a low grade fever, but by late last week he couldn’t stop coughing. He was admitted to Swedish Medical Center on Thursday and was dead by Monday.
His wife of 59 years, Nancy, said “in the last days, he never complained.”
Farley was a well-known Denver lawyer who was deeply compassionate towards the homeless and the less fortunate. His family says he had been president of the Denver Foundation and worked with the Archdiocesan Housing Committee for more than 30 years, accomplishments he was most proud of.
(credit: CBS)
His son-in-law, Marcus Brauchli, described Farley as “a man of intelligence, sharp witted humor, forebearance, wisdom and infinite compassion.”
Brauchli said Farley would help others instantly.
His daughter, Maggie, told CBS4, “He always tried to do the right thing and did a lot of good things for a lot of people.”
After getting him to the hospital Thursday, his family was never able to touch or comfort him again as he was placed in isolation due to the contagious virus. Nurses showed Farley how to FaceTime with his family, which he did in his final days.
RELATED: Latest Updates On The Coronavirus Outbreak In Colorado
His daughter said, ”I just told him he had been my guiding light, I’ll hear him and feel him in my heart. I was so lucky to have had him as a father.”
Unsure how he contracted the virus, his daughter is wracked with concern.
Mike Farley
Mike Farley (credit: CBS)
In their last conversation, she told her father, ”If there was a chance I brought this to him, please forgive me.”
She said nurses at Swedish showed Farley the same compassion he showed others during his life, showing him how to use a phone to see family members. The night before he passed, Farley FaceTimed with his family.
“I just told him I loved him and thanked him for a wonderful life together,” said his wife. “And he really wanted to hear everyone’s voice and he heard his grandchildren and that was really important.”
As a chaplain administered last rites, Farley’s family listened by phone.
“They were able to afford him dignity,” said Maggie Farley, ”and he died with grace like he lived his life.”
Now, Farley’s wife and daughter hope his death makes people realize they need to practice social distancing, stay home and follow the directives they receive from medical authorities.
“I think we need to listen to health officials, keep our distance, stay at home and minimize contact,” said his daughter, ”and not listen to politicians who might have different motives.”
His wife said, ”We just can’t put people in jeopardy. We have to stay home and follow the rules.”
Maggie Farley expressed concern that the care her father received in his final days, may soon not be available to other patients.
”So many people are getting sick, they’re not going to have the time or capacity and may not have ventilators or beds. If people can think of the consequences. It’s real, it does happen. Maybe we can do our small part.”
BRIAN MAASS
CBS4 Investigator Brian Maass has been with the station more than 30 years uncovering waste, fraud and corruption.
More from Brian Maass
