The doorbell rings, and it feels as if the sun has broken through the clouds. The dogs rush to the front door. There’s Blue, the yapping chihuahua, and Marshmallow, the Shiba Inu with a limp. And here comes Misty McMichael with a big smile and a big hug.
A visitor has arrived, and Steve McMichael is as buoyant as someone in his situation can be.
Whoever is at the door undoubtedly will bring up his upcoming induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and if he could still smile widely and proudly, he would.
For a while, McMichael derived pleasure from Haagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream in his feeding tube, but he was cut off because it made him vulnerable to pneumonia. For now, he can experience flavor only in ice chips — Pedialyte, cranberry and Coca-Cola.
These days, satisfaction is scarce and pleasure is mostly a memory.
Three years into a diagnosis of ALS, McMichael, the former Chicago Bears defensive tackle, is about one year beyond when doctors said he might expire. He can’t move his legs or arms. Misty, his wife, has rushed him to the hospital at least 10 times over the last few years, always with dire fear.
He hasn’t been able to communicate verbally for about a year, but he expresses simple sentences through a speech-generating device that reads eye movements. The machine has a few phrases saved that he uses frequently.
“Ass on fire,” he makes it say often, a plea to address a recurring pain.
“More meds,” is another.
If the visitor is expected, he often won’t ask for more meds to ensure he isn’t foggy. There is a lot that McMichael can’t do anymore, but he can still connect with the people who have been important to him.
Some people ring that bell once. Some do it every so often. Some ring all the time.
They experience humanity and intimacy in a way they never have.
In the living room is a gray reclining chair.
It was bought so Steve’s sister Kathy McMichael would have a place to sleep in 2021 and 2022 before he had 24-hour medical attendants.
As well as anyone, she can soothe his pain.
She holds his hand and talks about old memories, including games she saw him play going back to high school. Sometimes they watch a YouTube compilation their sister Sharon put together with videos of him playing football at various levels, wrestling, singing and more.
Staying with him for extended periods has been easy for her. Leaving, not so much.
“When I was there, I tried to be upbeat for him,” she says. “But when I was leaving, I thought he would die and I would never see him again. I would cry all the way home on the plane and spend the next two days in bed crying.”
Kathy McMichael, right, calls big brother Steve her hero. (Courtesy of Kathy McMichael)
When Kathy was a toddler, Steve — “Stevie” she calls him — played dolls with her. She had a Barbie; he had a G.I. Joe.
“I have the fondest memories of him,” says Kathy, who is a legislative director for the Texas attorney general’s office. “People don’t realize how kind and sweet he is. He’s always been my hero.”
For most of their lives, they talked almost daily on the phone. When Kathy went through a divorce at 26 and was so upset she couldn’t eat, Steve showed up with a U-Haul to move her, set her up in a new apartment and took her out for a meal every day for a couple of weeks. “He saved me and it turned my whole life around,” Kathy says.
She was with him in February for the announcement that he would be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Kathy thought he didn’t look good at the time. She couldn’t see the lovely green in his irises. She feared the worst.
Now, Kathy thinks differently. “He’s not ready to go,” she says. “We’ve talked about it. I don’t know that he ever will be. He doesn’t give up on anything. It’s not in his makeup.”
She’s looking forward to traveling to Canton, Ohio, for the induction, but if Steve can’t go, Kathy will be at her big brother’s bedside.
When Mike Singletary first visited McMichael after his ALS diagnosis, they prayed together.
“My hope was he could get healed,” Singletary says.
That isn’t happening, but the middle linebacker keeps praying with his teammate. Even now, there are blessings to be thankful for, and more to request.
Singletary tells stories, too, hoping to see that old spark in McMichael’s eyes. He talked about a 1984 game against the Raiders in which McMichael, Singletary and company knocked out quarterbacks Marc Wilson and David Humm. Next up was supposed to be punter Ray Guy — but he refused to go in.
“He loved it,” Singletary says. “It’s kind of like reading a bedtime story.”
One day Singletary told him how much he always appreciated him, how much he meant to him, and how he felt he could always trust him. When they were playing together, Singletary said, he always knew where McMichael was going to be.
McMichael tried to respond using his speech-generating device. He tried and tried, but he couldn’t get it to do what he wanted it to.
“He got so frustrated that he started crying,” Singletary said. “That was a tough moment.”
A world traveler, John Faidutti has been to Egypt, Russia, Thailand, China, the United Arab Emirates, Argentina and many other destinations. He has climbed Mt. Rainer and Mt. St. Helens.
But he hasn’t traveled in almost three years.
“I’m afraid of leaving because if Steve dies when I’m gone, it will kill me,” he says. “I have anxiety about that.”
Faidutti, an investor, met McMichael about 25 years ago at a party and bonded on summer afternoons at a swimming pool outside of the apartment complex where McMichael lived. When Misty gave birth to Macy 16 years ago, Faidutti was in the delivery room. Steve asked him to be her godfather and started calling him “Padrino,” Italian for godfather.
“Now you’re in the family,” Steve told him. “Once you’re in the family, you can’t get out.”
When Macy started talking, she couldn’t say “Padrino,” so she called him “Drino.” Now, everyone knows him as “Padrino” or “Drino.”
Before Steve lost the ability to speak, Padrino asked him what he could do for him in the future. “Just take care of Macy,” Steve told him.
As Steve has been progressively unable to do what a father usually does, Padrino has done more.
John Faidutti, left, has embraced his role as godfather to Macy McMichael, Steve’s daughter. (Courtesy of John Faidutti)
Macy is a shy girl, but not around Padrino. On “Macy’s day,” which happens once or twice a week, he takes her to a restaurant for food. They play video games together. He helped teach Macy to drive.
Padrino makes sure Steve knows everything that’s happening with his daughter. She’s very artistic, and she shows Padrino her creations. Padrino makes sure Steve sees them.
Padrino tied Steve’s shoes back when he wore them. He shares his Prime Video password. He’s removed Steve’s catheter. He’s changed his diapers. Giving his friend comfort is a privilege, not a burden. “I have no problem doing whatever he needs me to do,” Padrino says.
Many times, it has seemed the pen was almost out of ink for McMichael. But then it keeps writing.
Every time he’s had a medical emergency, they ask him to blink once if he wants to go to the hospital to be treated or twice if he wants to let it be. McMichael always has blinked once.
To Padrino, McMichael repeatedly has indicated he wanted to keep living.
On McMichael’s 66th birthday last October, Padrino told him, “Let’s make it one more year.”
In his eyes, Padrino saw determination.
Ric Flair hasn’t seen McMichael in about a month and a half because he’s been traveling. He plans to visit him soon.
When he comes, Flair tries to limit his time with McMichael to about 30 minutes because he can’t take much longer.
The visual can be unsettling.
Except for McMichael’s spirit, everything about him is withered.
“It’s very difficult for me to see him like that,” Flair says. “It’s so hard. My job when I’m there is to make him smile and laugh, and make him know people care about him. I walk away thinking I’m the luckiest guy in the world not to have something like that.”
Pro wrestling great Ric Flair, right, with Misty and Steve McMichael, calls Steve “one of the greatest guys I’ve ever known.” (Courtesy of Misty McMichael)
Flair and McMichael started out as enemies. In 1996, McMichael was a commentator for WCW wrestling when Flair hit on his then-wife, Debra. McMichael, with former NFL player Kevin Greene, subsequently challenged Flair and Arn Anderson to a tag-team match. But instead of exacting revenge on Flair, McMichael took a heel turn, attacking Greene and joining forces with Flair, Anderson and Chris Benoit as “The Four Horsemen.”
“When he came on board, his personality won me over in five seconds,” Flair says. “It’s bigger than life. He’s one of the greatest guys I’ve ever known.”
To Flair, McMichael was more than a wrestling partner.
“We hung out every night, partied and drank,” he says, laughing. “You kidding me? I spent New Year’s Eve one year with him and Lawrence Taylor in Las Vegas. Tell me about it. Steve can be something else. He gets away with it because he’s Steve.”
Not many could hang with the legendary “Nature Boy” after hours. But Flair claims to have struggled to keep pace with McMichael, who showed up every Monday for five days on the road with $15,000 in cash in his pocket, saying, “I’ve got more money than I’ve got time.”
They were bonded in the wildest of times. Now they share the most tender moments.
Flair looks forward to partying with McMichael again in Canton at McMichael’s induction.
“If they bring him up on the stage, I think that will be one of the most emotional, fulfilling moments,” he says. “It will be one of the most powerful things I will have seen.”
During his playing days, McMichael hired Michael Kinyon, a friend of teammate Kevin Butler’s, to hang mirrors at his house. Kinyon owns Michael’s Glass and also takes sideline photos for the team.
Their relationship grew, but it took time.
“I was a little afraid of the guy initially, honestly,” Kinyon says. “For an outsider like me, it probably took a year and a half of hanging around with him almost every week before I felt comfortable.”
The turning point came when he was with a group of Bears players in a private room at a golf outing and a photographer from the event came in to take pictures. McMichael charged at him and told him to leave.
“We’ve got our own photographer,” he told him, punching Kinyon in the chest, sending him stumbling and leaving a bruise.
Butler turned to Kinyon and said, “You’re in.”
After McMichael was stricken with ALS, Misty asked Kinyon to install mirrors so she could see him in his bedroom from her bedroom.
Kinyon often brings liquid CBD and THC to put in McMichael’s feeding tube. It helps with the pain and anxiety.
On a recent visit with former Bears equipment man Gary Haeger and defensive tackle Jim Osborne, they brought up a 1984 game. Quarterbacks Jim McMahon and Steve Fuller were injured, and Mike Ditka had no choice but to play Rusty Lisch.
Then McMichael set his eyes on the screen of his speech-generating device and worked diligently. Minutes passed.
And it was McMichael who dusted the cobwebs from the tale and delivered the zinger.
“Ditka cut him on the plane ride home,” he said through the machine.
Laughter, loud laughter.
Dan Hampton often brings mutual friends to visit McMichael.
In numbers, there is comfort.
They go around his bed and try to bring him cheer.
“Normally, his eyes are laden and sad,” Hampton says. “But if you tell a good story, his eyes light up.”
Lifting his spirits is one thing. Lifting his body is another.
When he still could speak, McMichael sometimes asked to be held upright to stretch. But lifting him was like lifting a 175-pound sandbag, and hardly anyone had the strength and assuredness. Hampton, who still looks like he could bull rush through a double team, would do it for close to a minute. He can