I am confused.

Michael was such a handsome fellow. I think he had the broadest, most sincere smile I have ever seen.

I remember my teen friend working out at the “Y.” He was lifting weights. His T-shirt was off. He looked down at his slender teen arms and complained, “They’re so skinny. I’ve got to get some muscle.”

What he did not realize is that the arms were not skinny; they were trim, perfect.

I thought, “Beauty is wasted on the young, for sure.”

At school I helped him with his English – how to construct a paragraph that made sense. It was for his journal. Or it was to prepare a book report.

Talk about Maine’s Lakes Region having some of the most promising youths! It is true. That fellow was one of them. But he was also troubled about many things. Like where he was going to sleep, where he was going to eat, who he could call “family.”

Once I met a neighbor who had taken him into his apartment. The youth slept on the couch. “That’s fine with me,” Michael said without a trace of grimace.

But after awhile, he wore out his welcome there. He was like many other teens – bad days and good days.

“I’ve signed it!” he shouted as he ran toward me with the state form. He had filled it out – now emancipated from any parent or guardian. Freedom! On his own. He could sign his own papers without having to get permission. Free at last!

I thought, “Freedom? Where is all this finally going to lead?” But truly where else had Michael to go but to himself?

One morning he fell into a really nasty day at school. With that, he stormed out of the building, never to return.

Months passed. I wondered about that young man with the broadest smile. Then I parked outside our village post office. Walking toward me was none other than my friend!

“Grant!” he called out. With that he ran toward me, picked me up into the air with a manly hug, greeting me with that ever-present winning smile.

“So, what’s up?” I asked.

Well, this and that, but no steady job, a bit of a hassle regarding some relationships, not certain about a few other basics.

Then one day at school, the phone rang in the teachers’ room. I picked it up. It was his familiar voice. It did not take long for me to garner the true facts; life was not spelling out a happy camper’s tale.

Typical of Michael, he kept his voice sounding confident, an upswing to it. He promised things would make a turn around. He was staying in a trailer. It was mid-winter. “Are you warm?” “Yes, it’s warm.” So he at least was warm that winter.

He told me that he and his girlfriend had had a baby. Then, so very immature at parenting, they had a fight. With that, she closed off his seeing his newborn son. No more visits. No more contact. Yet the boy was all Michael actually had left in this life. Tiny Brandon was Michael’s totality. Without Brandon, life was zero.

The next time I heard about Michael, late one Saturday night on Route 302 he’d darted in front of a car. Preparing for his final moment, he’d left a note in his pocket. In sum, he wrote that he had nothing to live for anymore.

Those English sentences, that journal, our mountain climb, his post office welcome, the last time I heard his voice on the phone – it all came rushing over me.

“What more could I have done to rescue him?” I asked myself over and over. Years have passed and I still ask that question over and over. In my memory Michael’s face is still fresh as if photographed yesterday.

If I could go back in time, I would tell him he could bunk out at our place. I would try something more. It’s just that all that’s gone now. Over and out.

So I’m left with this recurring thought: “Today am I passing someone who desperately needs a real friend? If so, who then is it, Lord?”

And you?

Jesus said: “Greater love has no man than this – that he lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13) Could that friend be the next one passing you by?