My written expression to a dear friend, after he brought his own life to an early end.
793,and some odd thousand hours in this life, and you made a decision to make this moment your last.
You took a permanent solution to a temporary problem. But you may argue that if you could speak
The Sand in my Hand
The tighter I squeez the fist full of sand
The more slips threw my fingures, and back to the land
These things that bring Life to its spiteful end
I do not understand
One life postponed from its early end
As another slips threw the small spaces in my hand.
The postponements of one while another slips threw the space in my hand represents the series of events that placed another fellow in my life around the same time that Mike took his own. A New acquaintance brought himself to a place where I gathered with like minded fellows. While we discussed a problem he was having on a newly purchased car and what a possiable solution would be.
Today I woke up late for church. On the way I remember the plan I had made with a friend to fix a seat that had malfunctioned in an automobile he had recently purchased. On the way down the road I began to type a message to be sent saying “where is the car at brother”. When I first had the thought cross my mind this morning for the repairs to be done, followed by “maybe I can put this off for today.” This thought was replaced by my conscience saying “if you say you’re going to do something, do what it takes to get it done”.
Later after church service my planning for the days next thing crossed my mind, also the seat issue that I haven’t heard back anything on. Immediately my thought said “well if you haven’t heard back anything yet, it can be done at another time” until my conscience repeated the second part of that phrase “do what it takes to get it done”
My second attempt to send the message was in a talk to text format, which after sending I realized I had never sent the first. What happen next is the thing I am still processing. The man called me back saying “Man you got in touch at just the right moment “oh, what’s up? “ I replied.
He went on to vaguely describe how that today had so far been a “third” of a day and that he needed to talk. We made a plan to meet. In between meeting up I stopped to take care of a few errands that bought the perfect amount of time to take place between us meeting. I had still under estimated the story that was about to unfold and had I shown up early to his house I was in no mood to wait. Had it not been for the time between the stops I made, I may never have heard from this friend again.
We pulled up at his house at the same time and went inside to talk. He told me at the time my text came through he was sitting in the parking garage at a local casino waiting for a large amount of a very harmful substance to be brought down the elevator to his car. We also talked about how over the past few days things had Been so bad this was the solution he had come too.
I want to take a moment and examine the scene at hand. There is two stories going on here and upper ,and a lower. The lower story being the one that pulled this man’s life to the point of a deadly overdose syringe is in the front seat, dealer on the way down to deliver the “solution, to a victory for death to this man” The upper story or “God‘s story “. This man buys and sells cars for business, and had purchased this particular car a few weeks before with the malfunctioning seat and had a buyer lined up for after the repairs were made. God put us both in the meeting where we discussed the seat and when we were going to work on it two weeks prior. All of that lined up in perfect timing also with The 20 minute delay that kept me from getting to his house early and blowing the whole second half of the day that I believed derailed this man from dying a drug overdose death. After about an hour of talking about what got him to this point we headed off to a regular gathering for 4 PM. Almost all the way through this meeting I leaned over to him and asked “how are you feeling”? He replied “just fuck it all ,I can’t do it “. The last person that was called on to share, running the meeting over time saying something that changed the perspective of this fellow’s day. “we can’t give away what we ourselves don’t have” after the meeting this man shared with me what it meant to him. Very different than from what I had perceived, but it got his mind to turn around and start thinking differently to the situation that doomed his world. This story could have been written in a whole different way, but willingness to do the next right thing for ourselves and one another is what I see that gave God the opportunity to save a life.
Just yesterday I saw this man celebrating his second year of sobriety, and once again there I was with a front row seat to watching this man’s life turned completely around. “One day at a time”