Michael's Last Days on Earth

  Michael's last week on earth was filled with fun and dreams for his future. He was happy and glowing and was finally putting on some weight. Daniel was in summer school at Sequatchie High School so Michael hung out with me at home. He had been nursing his orphan kitten for weeks that kept him quite occupied. She was 1 ½ months old but only weighed 4/10ths of a pound. She required various medications and frequent feedings and almost constant care. He carried her around in her little pink baby blanket, in his pocket or on his shoulder, as she preferred. She was doing great and developed quite a little personality, and began to play and run around all over the house.

  Michael had been looking around for a summer job since graduation. He spent a lot of time on the phone, checking back on jobs that he had applied for, waiting to see when someone was going to hire him. He learned that he was the next in line to be hired at Auto Zone in Dunlap, and he couldn't wait to start.

  Together, we made a list of things that interested Michael in the way of furthering his education and we were researching the possibilities for his future. We had college catalogs from everywhere opened up on the table and he was filling out forms for all of them. He was inquiring about taking fire science, since he was already a volunteer firefighter, and he was also was looking into becoming a Wildlife Officer or a Forest Ranger. He wanted to go to school to be a licensed welder too on the side, and made arrangements with one of his former teachers to guide him in that direction. He planned to convert our garage into a welding shop where he could do repair work and also work on engines. The sky was the limit now that he had his high school diploma. Things for Michael were falling into place.

  Michael had been doing a lot of chores around the farm with me that week. I raise Miniature Horses and he was helping me with various farm related things. On Monday, I wanted one of our fences taken down to relocate somewhere else, so Michael had pulled out a lot of fence posts and took down most of the fence line. It was very hot outside, so I told him to leave the rest until Tuesday, which he did. That's when he came up with another one of his new comedy routines; enter, Michael's new best friend and creation, "Raoul, the drunk gay black guy," who kept us laughing for the remaining days.

  On Wednesday, Michael cleaned up his room for the first time since Christmas which consisted of moving one pile of junk on the floor three feet to the left to be closer to another pile of junk on the floor. That enabled him to reveal that yes, there was still a carpet in there under all of it. He returned his basket of clean folded laundry to the dirty clothes hamper to be washed again to avoid having to put them into his drawers. That was Michael. He picked up his remaining dirty clothes off the floor and threw them in the hallway where they eventually would make it to the washing machine in a couple of days after walking over them a hundred times and only after the dogs were finished rolling around on it. This would lead to an extra trip to the store because Michael would insist that his clothes be laundered only in fresh-scented "Gain with Joyful Expressions." Typical Michael.

The garage where all the kids hang out.

   Every day when Dan got home from summer school the two brothers bolted straight to the garage as if there were a gigantic magnetic force drawing them there, to work on anything that involved oil and grease, while being serenaded by the boom boom blasting of something that they called music. The garage area was their domain, where the boys and their Dad were notorious for dragging home junk vehicles that they could use for parts to build more junk vehicles, thus creating an eyesore at the end of our pretty back yard behind the orchard. Michael had been working on an engine for a little mini chopper on and off for about a year. His intention was to get the engine running at top performance speed so that he could put it on a go-kart that he once had owned. He was going to buy the go-kart back as soon as he got a job and saved up his paychecks. He would take sporadic trips test driving the mini chopper through the yard, put-putting along for a few minutes and then, kerplunk, it was broke down time and time again and wheeled back to the garage for yet another tear down. This ritual went on every day, including more grease induced labor. p>

Michael's crooked fence.

   On Thursday I announced that we needed another fence put up for an additional paddock for the horses. Michael was less than thrilled about fencing duties considering the 90+ degree heat outside, but mostly because he grieved the absence of Sponge Bob and Jimmy Neutron time on the tv. He did get outside with the string line and I finally decided where the new fence would go. We spent over an hour measuring things out when we discovered that between the two of us, we couldn't add, subtract, multiply or divide, so this fence line was going to be a mess. When he tried to set the first post, he hit rock, so he moved the post over a little bit and hit rock again. This was starting to get annoying and after fooling around with it for at least half a day, we decided to call it quits and re-configure it in the morning, and this time, bring a calculator out with us.

  Michael was elated that he got a reprieve from fence work and after eating a frozen pizza, and a couple of rounds of miscellaneous sandwiches it was kitten care time again. Afterwards, he went to the garage to work on the greasy engine again while waiting impatiently for Dan to come home and join him.

  Friday morning was different. I woke Michael up around 7:30 PM by my traditional bang on the door followed by my rather annoying "Wake up sleepy boy," to his assortments of grunts and groans and "Go away, I'm sleeping." I told him through the door that we had to go to town and run errands, and an Egg McMuffin could be involved. I knew that would work. Food bribery always worked. Michael had a sign that he would wear around his neck: "Will work for food." Our first stop was the Farmer's Co-op and then we went to Auto-Zone because he needed a bolt for the motor-mount on his car. Then we stopped at Subway for his favorite, a cold-cut trio with extra olives, where he contemplated taking a broken Subway sign that was in a junk pile behind the building for the garage. Not shocked at my son the garbage picker, I said a firm "Nope, don't even think about it" and I drove off before he could give it another thought. On the way home, we had a heart to heart talk about college and his future and he was so excited about venturing into a new part of his life. I couldn't stop telling him how proud I was of him that and how special he was. I told him that we should celebrate his graduation and combine it with a huge 4th of July party with all his friends, hot dogs and hamburgers on the grill, and tons of fireworks. I told him to call his girlfriend and to make arrangements with her to come over tomorrow morning on Saturday and put up our Walmart pool.

Young love.

 

  The minute we got home, Michael ran right to the phone and told his girlfriend that we were having a huge pool party on 4th of July and that everyone was invited. He checked on the kitten to be sure she was ok and then we went out to the barn to work. He unloaded all the shavings into the horse's stalls and helped me get the horses in out of the heat and we put them back in the barn where it was nice and cool.

 

 

 

 

Mini Chopper

He went to the garage and brought some kind of engine thing part in the living room with some tools. He said He said it was something to get the little chopper to run and he was adjusting something on it. I asked him why he was so persistent in fooling around with that stupid thing and he said because he loved to fix engines and he knew he could get it to work. He said it was going to run by tonight.

  Then we attempted to build that fence again. It was really hot outside again so we decided to relocate the string line completely and start all over. He set three posts that were not straight and or evenly spaced and I was complaining about it so he pulled them back out of the ground and started all over. He got all the posts set and then set the two wooden posts that would be holding up the gate. We were running the hose trying to set them with some water and ended up in a mud fight. We were having so much fun. The posts were wobbeling and when we stepped back and looked at our new fence line, everything was crooked. We couldn't help but laugh so hard and decided to heck with this and that we'd leave it for Dad to fix on Saturday.

  By that time it was late afternoon and Michael was hot and hungry. We came in for a couple of hours to eat and cool off and watch some Nickelodeon TV with the kitten on his shoulder, and wait for Dad and Dan to come home. Michael went into his new comedy routine again and decided to call some of his friends and perform it for them via the telephone. We laughed so much that day, we laughed a lot that whole week.

  Dan came home with his father sometime after 5:00, Friday evening, and the boys went to the garage as usual determined to get the little chopper running. Dad joined them to see what they were up to. In the meantime, I ordered pizza. When I called for the boys out the back door to go pick up the pizza, no one was out there. Everyone was gone and I saw my husband take off out of my driveway in my truck in a big hurry and I couldn't imagine why everyone left. They had heard the crash from the garage and knew it was Michael.

  Michael had been hit and run head on while traveling off of the road up on the grassy area. He wasn't doing anything wrong. He remained alive for some two hours and passed away during surgery. I never refer to this as "the accident" because when some crazed person on drugs or alcohol gets behind the wheel of a vehicle and kills someone, it's no accident. It's murder.

  I try to dwell on the good things that were in Michael's life and how funny he was and how good of a kid he really was. I loved his heart. I am so happy that so much of his time during his last week on earth was spent laughing and playing with me. I am so glad that I took the time to tell Michael everyday how much I loved him and how proud I was of him. I know that hearing those words made him as happy as he could be. I know we aren't the perfect parents but Lord knows we tried the best way we knew how and I know that Michael knew that.