Michael, My Archangel

The Romantic, The Comedian, and Your Friend

  Michael was named for Michael the Archangel; the Prince of Angels, the Champion of Angels, The Protector that led God's army against evil. Michael was My Archangel on earth. Michael had the most beautiful heart that I have ever known. He was gracious, thoughtful, and generous. He was modest. He was humble. He was always thinking of others. He did many acts of random kindness, some large, and some small, that usually went un-noticed, or that he kept a secret. He didn't expect any thanks or recognition.

  As a toddler he used to pick flowers for me all the time. This became something he did throughout his life for me. When he'd see a pretty flower anywhere, he would bring it home to me; a bouquet for the table, or one for my hair. At Christmas time he never passed up a bell ringer without putting a donation in, even if that meant he would be short of cash for what he had planned to buy. Michael hardly ever had any money in his pocket and stayed broke, but if you needed what he had, it was yours. He would give you his last penny and go without to help someone else in need. The minute Michael managed to get a few dollars for himself, he'd spend it on someone else. Michael came home after school nearly every day acting like he was starving. Seems he would give his lunch away on a regular basis to anyone that didn't have any lunch money, or to anyone that was still hungry and wanted more to eat. He loved to go to yard sales and he always managed to see something that he thought I would like, or his brother or his Dad, and use his money to buy a gift for us, instead of buying what he wanted first. One time he went to a yard sale and he bought about 50 plastic toy model horses for $2.00. He brought them home over flowing in several plastic bags. I asked him what in the world was he was doing with them. His response was "I knew you wanted a herd of horses someday, so here you are." Our home is filled with all sorts of little gifts and trinkets that were given to us by Michael. He never asked for a thing when we would be shopping. I would tell him to get some shirts or a pair of jeans, but he usually would say no and refuse anything for himself. If I insisted, he would pick out the cheapest thing on the rack. He never wanted to ask for things for himself, but he did want to buy gifts for others. When I would offer to give him some extra money, he didn't want to accept it and would tell me to keep it.

Michael made this.

  Michael always made sure that I had a birthday card, a mother's day card, and gifts for any occasion always before anyone else would even think of it. Every time he went to a convenience store, he would always come out with a candy bar or something for me. Ten years ago he bought me a little artificial red rose that was on the counter at a convenient store. He said it was to keep in my truck. It's still there. I could always count on Michael to be thoughtful.

The Rose

Michael helped build the barn on weekends.

 
  I could always count on Michael for anything. No matter what I needed, he'd do it. No matter what was wrong, he'd try to fix it. If it meant putting himself out for me, he didn't care; he always came through. There were plenty of times that he would be relaxing or busy with his own things, but if I needed a hand he would drop what he was doing and help me. He spent many times with me in freezing temperatures, or during a storm, helping me get the horses in the barn or helping me if they were sick. He would always do the right thing. Michael was a devoted son and brother. Was Michael really all this perfect? Well, no, of course he wasn't perfect. He had a stubborn streak a mile long and was mouthy; but Michael wanted to be a good boy and he was close enough to perfect for me.

Some of Michael's photograhy.

Always helping with the horses.

  Michael wasn't your typical teenager. He was unique. He was very sensitive and emotional and worried about things like the rainforest and the ozone-layer. He was a romantic who appreciated nature and cherished the beauty of a sunset or a sunrise; things that most of us take for granted. He liked to photograph them to immortalize an incredible moment. He didn't wear the kind of clothes to school that all the other kids wore. Big baggy jeans falling down his butt with oversized tee shirts were not his style. Michael preferred to dress for school in a nice pair of khaki pants with a dressy-type shirt. He also liked the colors pink and black and wore pink and black rubber bracelets on his wrist for a special reason. It symbolized his special connection with his niece, Tasha. He loved soft classical music and the music you hear on the home page is Cannon in D by Pacheval, which was always one of our favorites. That was "our song." He also enjoyed the romantic music of Charlotte Church, Loreena McKennitt, Enya, and Celine Dion. He also liked a German rock band named Rammstein but he couldn't understand the words to the songs, so he taught himself how to speak and read German. He liked good old fashioned Rock & Roll and he knew all the golden oldies by heart from my era of the 60's because I raised him on it. He loathed rap, but while cruising through town in his car he'd blast that boom boom stuff out of his very loud stereo system because Dan made him. That didn't last long because Dad took the boom boom maker out of his car. He was also a mush for a good romance movie that would make him cry and his favorite movie of all time was Cruel Intentions. He liked Christmas movies at Christmas time and scary movies at Halloween time, but if they got too violent, he wouldn't continue to watch them. He gave up scaring the little kids on Halloween a few years ago and traded in his monster costumes to become a Hostess Twinkie instead. He liked laughter a lot more than scary stuff.

  Michael was all of 5'5 tall and 137 pounds at his last weigh in during May 2006, but he was larger than life. Michael didn't like being small and it bothered him which led him to his issue of low self esteem. He lifted weights and had muscles in his arms to compensate. He was strong. He always felt that he had to prove himself, which was far from the truth, but that's how he felt. He insisted that I buy him a certain kind of black leather boot year after year which sometimes I refused to buy because they were so clunky and not appropriate for school. I could never figure out why he liked them so much until I picked them up the other day and looked at the bottoms; they made him taller. I don't know how I missed that one. I feel so bad about it now that I just figured it out. Sometimes Michael reminded me a lot of Charlie Brown, the kid with a heart of gold that just needed to be understood.

  Michael was wild, whacky, wonderful and could be down right inappropriate too. He could charm the pants off a snake. He was affectionately known at school as "Little Mikey." At home, he was always "Michael" or "Darn It Michael" or "Give me a break Michael" or "Knock it off Michael" or "I'm telling your father Michael."

Greenish Brown Female Sheep "Olive Ewe"

  Michael was great free entertainment and was quite the stand up comic and an inventor. A day didn't go by where Michael wouldn't come up with something so off the wall and ridiculous that you just had to laugh. He'd blow my mind. His brain worked overtime on silliness. In the evenings, his Dad and I would not be able to enjoy a quiet movie for too long before we'd be interrupted in some way by Michael. There would be many nights when we would hear strange noises coming from Michael's room wither it was banging or laughing, or squeaking, drilling, pounding, SCREAMING, or something buzzing. We used to wonder what he was doing in there, but after a while, we learned that it was much safer for our blood pressure not to know. If the house blew up, so be it. Michael was simply being creative and inventive by taking things apart to build other things. When he was two years old I was cooking dinner one day and when I checked on him in the living room, there he was taking the television apart. He was always taking his bicycles and toys apart as a little tiny kid. Screws, nuts and bolts all over the place. That should have given me a clue that raising Michael was going to be interesting, and oh, it was. There were wires and tools and gadgets and electric tape going in and out of his room on a regular basis. It was frightful! It wouldn't have surprised me if some kind of a self propelled monster emerged from that room that would have capabilities of taking over the world. Eventually we found out that one of his most prized inventions was his portable tattoo parlor that he kept in a canvas shoulder bag that he liked to call his "man satchel." He always giggled about that. Seems he thought he would make a good living in the tattoo business. Oh dear. Another invention was his magic piercing machine, which I discovered by accident when I went to get a needle to give a horse a shot and found two dozen of them missing. Further inspection of my illustrious son and his room revealed a couple of hidden tattoos and an unauthorized pierced....... something. Michael wasn't allowed to pierce or tattoo himself in the first place, but we learned not to be shocked at anything that Michael came up with and just go with the flow.

Your Batmen are Scott, Michael, and Dan.

   Michael loved comedy and laughter and he was all about fun. Mischievous wouldn't even begin to cover it. He was a practical jokester all his life. His favorite TV shows included re-runs of I Love Lucy, The Golden Girls, Becker, Will & Grace, and Sponge- Bob. He told people such crazy stuff to get them to laugh. He told everyone that he was going to have three boys and name them Herschel, Moesha, and Shlomo; he got that from Saturday Night Live. He loved old Abbott and Costello movies too. On any given night, he'd come bouncing into the living room performing in a variety of homemade costumes which might include wearing his Sponge-Bob boxers that were three sizes too big held up with safety pins, with his toe nails painted red, and strange things on his head. He would go into any number of impersonations or acts that he loved to do. His version of John Travolta's Saturday Night Fever, complete with finger pointing dancing, was guaranteed to double you over with laughter or at least make you roll your eyes and look at him and shake your head in disbelief. His last comedy routine was the creation of his new best friend that he called "Raoul, the drunk, gay, black guy" which included the side to side head bobble, one hand on hip while the other one made goofy hand gestures, wiggling his butt, and lines that would make you laugh your head off. If you happened to be a telephone solicitor, you had my sympathy if Michael answered the phone. He would try to convince the caller that they had dialed a secret number that was only known to the U.S. Government and in his best Iraqi voice he'd say "You work for Osama Bin Laden, I call Navy on you." Since he never had a dime in his pocket, he would go to McDonald's drive-thru after school and order mayonnaise and water. The kids that worked there always knew it was Michael and they always had an extra burger or a couple of hot apple pies for him, but he still insisted on getting the water and mayonnaise too.

Future Millionaire

   Michael liked to wear his special collection of fun tee shirts on the weekends that had messages on them: "Future Millionaire," "Not Wearing Underwear," and his pink one that said "Tough Guys Wear Pink" were some of his favorites.

  Shopping with Michael frightened me and was always an adventure. I'd have to give him "the lecture" every single time before we entered a store: "Now Michael, you have got to behave yourself and don't do anything crazy to embarrass us.......please!" I wasn't talking to a two year old; he was 18. I don't know of anyone that has ever been thrown out of Wal-Mart but Michael was! Twice! I believe that he was riding kiddie bicycles around the store on one occasion and the other time, I heard that a smoke bomb was involved. Where did he come up with this stuff? I have no idea. That was just Michael being Michael.

  Michael loved his friends deeply. His friends meant everything to him. His world revolved around his friendships and he was devoted to them. Michael wanted everyone to like him and everyone did, except that sometimes, he didn't realize it. Michael was the most loyal friend you could have. He'd stick up for his friends and be there for them through thick or thin, the good times and the bad. All he ever wanted was to be liked. Everyone seemed to dump their troubles on him all the time and he would spend hours listening to them and trying to help and show compassion towards them. If someone needed help, he'd run out the door on a second's notice for them. He was a good shoulder to lean on for a lot of people, but he never wanted to burden anyone with his problems. He didn't want to be a burden to anyone and always put himself and his needs last. Michael took the blame for things that he didn't do because it meant helping out a friend. He got punished quite a few times for things that he did not do, and I would find out too late to help. If Michael didn't like you that meant that there was something wrong with you. You were probably drinking or using drugs and that made you a loser in his opinion.

  If Michael had lived in the 60's there's no doubt that he would have made a fine hippy, because he preferred peace and love over war and fighting. He hated fighting with a passion and was a peace loving kid. When there was a family dispute, he couldn't stand it. He would appear to be angry on the outside, but I knew that arguing made him hurt on the inside. He wanted us to be the perfect family; the kind that he would watch on old re-runs on TV where the kids could spoon launch mashed potatoes across the table at each other. He wanted a perfect world. He wanted everyone to get along and to love each other and live in peace and he would avoid a fight at all costs if he could. However, if anyone ever bothered Dan or any of his friends, he would be the first one there to stand up to the bad guys and wouldn't back down. Michael protected the ones he loved, just as the Archangel would. Michael was a true blue loyal friend in every way and Michael's friends are a bunch of great kids. I love it that they still keep in touch with us.

 If you are a friend of Michael's and want your picture posted on his friend's page, please e-mail it to me! If you have a short story to share about your friendship with Michael, e-mail me by clicking the link below. Teachers are invited too!

E-mail ~ My Archangel