The choices we make

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the choices people make in their lives.

Let me tell you about Michelle.

Michelle was my cousin. Actually, she was my mom’s first cousin, the daughter of my grandma’s brother, but because there’s such a big age difference between my grandmother and her youngest siblings some of my mom’s cousins are my age or younger. So in my close extended family we really don’t think about first cousins or things like that. We’re all just cousins.

There’s a picture of us when we were about two years old–Michelle, then our cousin Jonathan, and then me, all sitting in a row on a couch at my grandma’s, laughing at the camera. Michelle was born in May 1980, Jonathan in June 1980, and I in August 1980.

The three of us grew up together, although Michelle went in and out of our lives, bounced around between her divorced parents’ homes wherever they happened to be living at the time. During middle school, Michelle and her younger sister came back to our hometown and stayed for quite a while. Michelle went to my school and was even in several of the same classes as Jonathan and me. We went to the school dance together and had a lot of fun dancing to all the fast songs. Michelle was always more outgoing than I was. She made friends easily during the time she was at my school and I was jealous of how the boys liked her. I always felt ten times cooler around Michelle than when I wasn’t. I felt lucky to be her cousin and have her turn to me more often than the girls in our classes who had befriended her.

Michelle died of an accidental drug overdose July 1, 2006. Less than two months after her 26th birthday. She left behind a young son that will now never know his mother other than what he hears from other people.

A year and a half later I still don’t understand the choices she made. I don’t think I ever will. To me, it’s not worth throwing away all the things you can be and do.