Everyone has that friend they grew up with. The friend that you were so close in age to that your relationship mirrored that of siblings rather than friends. For me, that friend was Michael, and while he has been gone for ten years I can point to knowing him as one of the most important parts of my childhood.
As a kid, Michael was the brother I did not have, he teased me beat me up (playfully), he joined me in timeout and he was always amenable to a covert mission to steal fresh tomatoes from the garden. Michael was my partner in crime, that is until everything changed.
When we were kids our lives took different paths. For me I kept growing up, but for Michael his life was dramatically altered by a degenerative muscle disease that began around the time we were four or five.
At that age I understood being sick as something that you went to the doctor, and they fixed you. For years after he got sick, I thought that one day he would get better. Until around the time he died, I prayed every night that God would make Michael better.
No matter how hard you pray or wish for someone to be healed sometimes it is not going to happen. Life is not fair is a cliché, but it is also the truth. Disease does not discriminate between your friends, family and strangers. From wrong place and wrong time, to illness death is a reminder that sometimes we have no control over tomorrow.
In the years after Michael got sick, my mother diligently kept bringing my sister and I to visit him and his mother. Week after week and month after month we kept going.
Years later his mother told me that she could never repay my mom for the fact that she kept bringing her kids because everyone else had stopped.
In hindsight I cannot thank my mother for her dedication and bravery. Bringing your kids into a house that was filled with sadness could not have been an easy decision for a mother to make.
Knowing Michael taught me three very important lessons:
1. Let your heart get broken. You don't have to be able to say the right thing or even know what to do. The worst feeling in the world for a family is feeling a lone, and even if you can't fix the problem, all you have to do is be there for them.
2. Live every day like it is the last day you can walk. Now I am not big on movies or Netflix binges. While I will occasionally indulge in TV it is far from my priority. I don't want to watch life pass by in front of a computer screen, but I want to take it all in. The sights, the smells, and the way the wind feels when it blows against my face.
3. God is not a wish granting genie. He did not create disease, and he does not like to see people suffer. He also is not magic, and sometimes no matter how hard you pray even if it is every night for five years sometimes he won't answer.
Michael turned 21 last month, but there were celebratory drinks. There were no parties or presents given because he has been gone for 10 years.
Instead, I am still here and he will always live on as a part of my story.
