Bryan O"Brien Profile | Message Bryan at AncientFaces

Lets see if I can tell this story..It's been a few years ago now. When I was in maybe 7 or 8th grade, my younger sister went to a summer camp and brought back a friend who stayed with us for a week or so following camp at our house. Her name was Michelle. Michelle was a very attractive and fun young girl who really spiced up our family for the duration she was with us.. Our usual dinner table was pretty quiet generally speaking and having her at the table, it was definitely not quiet. There was laughter and we all enjoyed her so much.. I'm thinking she was around 11 years old . I was around 14 I think at the time. I really liked her. Of course we never forgot her time with us.. She lived about 100 miles from where we lived and so when I graduated from High School and the question came up as to where I might like to go to college. I immediately chose a school that was near her hometown thinking I might be able to look her up and see how she was doing. And so I did just that. When I did brave a visit , she seemed so very different.. She seemed sad, not at all how I remember her. I started sending some comic cards i would make from magazine cutouts etc to her.. and she often replied with the coolest hand drawn illuminated art letter type cards to me.. . I looked so forward to corresponding with her while at school. In one of my classes, there was an older long haired motorcycle guy named George.. George one day asked me if I knew Michelle. I was really surprised that he knew Michelle and he knew me.. by then she would have been around 16 or so. This guy was much older than that, and for some reason, I got the impression he was a campus drug dealer of some kind and lived in this college town. Anyway, one day, this guy wasn't showing up in class anymore.. I thought nothing of it until , for whatever reason I went to visit Michelle where she lived about 20 miles away from college. Her mother answered and said , “Michelle is not here, she took off on the back of a motorcycle with some long haired guy.. all I found in her room was this paper with an Arizona phone number.” Her mom gave it to me . Evidently Michelle was prone to running away from home and not telling her mom anything. This was not new.. so that explained why the letters stopped. I visited the Blessed Sacrament in the Catholic church on campus and pleaded with the Lord that He help this girl.. I told God I would do anything for Him if He would answer this prayer and help this girl. With dads permission I took the car and 20 dollars and some cans of sardines and drove non stop to Arizona. I went the a university library and reverse looked up the phone number and got an address.. Praise God !! So I drove to the address andof course who answered the door but George, that guy from class. Where is Michelle? I demanded.. He said, she was just arrested and flown back to New York. You just missed her.. Her mom flew out to get her. Oh,,, Okay.. and then George asked me if I would be willing to transport some marijuana back to school with me in the car. of course not I told him ,, and I left. When I get back to school, 3 or 4 days later, I am driving through town and I see Michelle walking down the street of the college town with a loaf of white bread slung over her shoulder.. (evidently she had run away from home again.. ) I stopped the car and ran after her. Where have you been ? Ive been looking for you! She wouldn’t engage me. I think she was afraid. i walked with her anyway. seemed like she spent a lot of time at the local bar called Gentleman Jim's. So here she was taking refuge in this college town amongst the hippies I guess you could call them and the marijuana community so to speak.. So , evenings, I'm sort of tracking her. She is in the bar hanging out.. still wouldn't engage me. . So I am spending my late afternoons after class, going to this bar.. trying to get to know some of the people who seemingly know her. So this one conversation I overheard one of the guys who she hung out with.. he mentions an address. 10 West Ave in conversation with another guy. so I find West Avenue number 10 and knock on the door. And this same guy Steve, who i overheard mentioning that address. answers the door,... he sees me, turns around and shouts up the stairs,, “Hey Michelle !! He found you !! He let me in, took me upstairs to the living room where she was , sitting in the living room with the curtains drawn and a ball in her hand and her dog Zap. .. I sat down.. still she wouldn't engage me.. She just looked so so sad.. One of the old guys in the house, looked in, made an off color remark and left. .. anyway I just sat there with her for a while and then left.. I realized that she wasn't eating very well.. the guys in the house were feeding her beer and pizza.. not much else.. So I started leaving some canned goods at the door for her now and again.. then I sort of gave up . thinking this is going nowhere.. eventually she would agree to go with me to the school cafeteria on occasion for a meal. The next time I visited home (100mile trip) I told my sister MaryJo whose friend she really was,, I found your friend Michelle!! and she is not doing so well . She keeps running away from home and now she is living in this college town with some older guys who have given her refuge in a house seemingly hiding from her mother.. So , my sister MaryJo writes her a letter and hands it to me and tells me to give it to her next time I see her. So I took it with me and went again to check on her and to see her.. nobody was home.. I cant recall.. I think I may have left it tucked in the few groceries I left for her on the porch. I didn't come back for maybe a week.. When I did go back... She answered the door quite differently.. She said” Where have you been??” I have been waiting for you..” “ your sister MaryJo invited me to come and live at your house.. she wrote “Micky come stay with us “you can be my sister, we can share a room, you can find new friends and we can go to school together “”.. So Michelle says to me “When can we go? “ .. I said , well ..right now if you want.. I’ll get the car.. I wasn't planning on this.. but 2 hours later we were at our house and my mom and dad said it would be okay,.. What about my mother she asked? I said,” I will go see your mother for you, don’t worry ” So my mom took her that afternoon.. got her situated in a room and enrolled her at school. I drove back to college , went to see her mother... Her mother said, “If you can do anything for her I am all for it” I give up , so that day.. Michelle. became my sister of sorts !! Living at our house !! I was so grateful.. She finished high school, she was once again a joy and a part of our family. One thing, she loved listening to rock music, I think she was addicted to rock music... cause when she was musing , she would listen to these sad songs with poetic sad lyrics. She was really into the lyrics. I used to buy her an album now and again, just to make her happy.. Tho the albums she asked for were hardly happy.. one was called “Epitaph” what a awful title. She was a poet and wrote a lot a lot and drew a lot a lot. I would take mail for her back to college for a couple of friends she had there. I looked forward to going home on what weekends I could go to see her .. Its seemed like God had answered my prayer beyond what I could have hoped for or imagined. She got a part time job in the library, finished High School. I guess she was with us maybe 2 years... she graduated. Here again, her love for rock music eventually led her across the street to the house of a 33 year old Vietnam vet , a nice guy who used to take us roller skating when we were kids .but he did have a drinking problem . He had an incredible music collection and a stereo that took up a whole wall of the room.. and above that state of the art stereo and album collection was a huge black velvet portrait of Satan.. So I am imagining her sitting over there more and more, listening to his music...in front of a portrait of Satan to the point of eventually getting it into her mind that she wanted to marry this guy. Which she did eventually. I remember going to the wedding. It was a justice of the peace wedding officiated by a woman judge.. ( she was the first woman judge in our town) I was a little scandalized that a judge who was also a mother, didn't try to discourage her from this move. Then I found out it was the daughter of this woman judge who painted the portrait of Satan in that guys house. He had commissioned it! My mother said JT you have to get rid of that painting .. you cant have that in your house.. I think he enjoyed the shock value it had for his guests. Oh my goodness. Things were not looking so good anymore to me regarding Michelle. So it was her spending so much time over there that sent me into a tizzy. I was so preoccupied with what appeared to me, all the good that transpired for her was seemingly unraveling before my eyes. I was in an emotional state... couldn't finish college... my parents said that I should go somewhere and get my mind off of this.. So they suggested Madonna House. I came here. and yes, I was able leave it all behind as the Madonna House first time experience is quite encompassing and engrossing in and of itself. I heard from my mom that the marriage didn't last .. she didn't like his drinking and he realized he had a teenager on his hands. I heard she had subsequently joined the army and then married again one of the officers... this time having a little girl. I received a post card from her while still here at Madonna house from the army base.. She said” Hey bro I miss you” I hope to see you again some day. I am 24 years old now. I am going to vote for the first time” “ I think I’ll vote democrat!”” and here is a picture of my little girl ( this was a post card photo taken in a photo booth in the mall) of her little girl sticking her tongue out at the camera .. “ And I told her to smile” she wrote !! I later learned she kept up a correspondence with my mom regularly.. but my mom didn't tell me so as not to distract me from my experience at Madonna House. But one day,, ,,my mom did call me to tell me that she received a phone call to say that Michelle had died of an aneurism in her sleep at age 24.. (She used to complain about terrible headaches.) .. what about her little girl I thought?? she would have been 3 years old now ..Her death meant there would be no more correspondence . We don’t even know who called. Or how they knew to call. So the years went by, i would ask in my heart, believing her to be with God,,, “Michelle!! Your little girl? She is 10 years old now. will I ever meet her??” and again, Michelle!! your little girl, she is 20 years old now. will I ever meet her. over the years looking on Facebook for any evidence of her daughter.. I did know her name. It was Chelaine. Iris Payne.. and again Michelle your little girl.. she is 32 years old now. will I ever meet her? and one day, i was waiting for a friend and near a computer i typed in Chelaine Iris Payne.. and i found a picture on LinkedIn of a girl who looked very much like Michelle, her mother. although with a different last name, . I emailed her employer, of this photo person who turned out to be her husband , and he said .. You found her!!! and guess what... she has been looking for you for the few years. So she emailed me every day. every day.. I asked her why every day?? She said I am afraid to loose contact with you.. I want to meet your mom and your brothers and sisters.. I want to meet people who knew my mom.. I told her my mom was having a birthday party in June in Asheville NC and all the family will be there.She would be welcome to come.. She drove all the way up from Texas with her husband and two girls. So I did get to meet her. God answered that prayer too!! Michelle will I ever meet her? Chelaine told me that she remembers the morning her mom wouldn't wake up.. and wouldn't wake up.. she went back to watching cartoons when eventually she went to the neighbors and said “I'm Hungry” .. and the response was “where is your mother dear?” she replied “she wont wake up...” then she recalls the ambulance and being taken to an orphanage and sharing an ice cream with another orphan boy.. then her grandparents came to get her . She remembered Christmas with her grandparents (fathers side) and wound up being raised by her grandparents. She said she would have preferred living with her dad but for some reason that wasn't possible. She was well taken care of and everything but was kind of rebellious . Got into drugs, with her boyfriend, they had a little girl, and when she and her boyfriend decided to enroll in a detox program. She called one of her cousins to look after her baby girl for a year while she and her boyfriend went for recovery.. her cousin came for her girl and then just after or the next day, social services came to take her child from her because of her addiction. As providence had it , her child was already gone. She realized. if social services had taken her child she might never have seen it again. Now she has two beautiful girls who I met with her husband. at my moms 80th birthday party. God answered my prayers twice and in a manner beyond what I could have asked or hoped for. Bryan -- Jesus said: I Am; never doubt; remember, it is I who hold the keys to many doors; I will open them one after the other, each one at the right time, do you understand this, My child? you need not worry, you need not haste; I, the Lord, will bring up everything on the right time;

Michelle Payne

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Miss you Michelle!! ain't nobody finer! Hope to see you one day again soon on the other side!

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Michelle , Lyndonville NY

High School

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