Look What I Found
A couple of years ago I helped a friend of mine Kayla overcome a hard time in her life. She was contemplating suicide. We talked all through the night. Then she told me she didn't have these negative feelings anymore. She told me that she would call me back. Later that morning she did call me back to tell me that her mother found out that she had contemplating suicide and wanted to take her to the Doc. She told me that she was feeling good and did not think that she needed to go and see the Doc. You could tell in her voice that her whole life was changing for the good. No longer the depressed person that was talking to me earlier, but a cheerful vibrant young woman. I told her that she should still should go to the Doc, for no other reason but to appease her mother and help herself out. I told her, "Kayla, you are a senior in college and you have sat through many a course that you did not want to be at. Go to the Doc and listen lie you were in class." She later called me to let me know how the Doctor's visit went. She said that she did all she could to keep from laughing because she was thinking of what I had told her.
We talked on and off many times after this. She told me that she no longer was interested in the course of her original degree but, that she now wanted to help people. I told her that she would be tested in the up coming days. She asked me what I meant. I told her that if that is what God had intended for her to do, people would start coming to her for help. People she knew and strangers alike would come into her life. I told her that she may lose many of her current friends, but new ones would come into her life. A month later she called me and told me about the many people who started to come into her life that wanted her help/advice. She said, "Jim, I don't know if I told them the right thing or not. I am worried that I may have harmed them more than helped them. What should I do?" I told her that the words she spoke to these people were not just her words. These are words that were given to her. You were just the messenger.
She graduated from college. She was getting ready now to start a job that she really wanted (helping people.) One Saturday I was to be the featured poet in Austin, Texas. I called to see if she wanted to go with me. She was a poet and loved to go to the poetry readings. I could not reach her. I told myself that I would try again later. Later came and I forgot. Sunday her sister called me to tell me that Kayla had died in a car accident Saturday night. I started thinking, man I wish I could have reached her. Maybe this young woman who had everything starting to go her way, would still be with us.
The first anniversary of her death, I was walking the grounds of where I work and thinking about her. That is when I found a bracelet on the ground. I picked it up. The inscription on the bracelet said,"Kayla." Man I felt the shivers up and down my spine.
I Love you Miss Kayla, from your adopted Grandpa Jim.
