“He was different. He was so sensitive to the pain of the world....

“He was different. He was so sensitive to the pain of the world. There used to be these placemats at Wendy’s with the faces of needy children. And Michael would just fixate on them. He was only four years old, but he’d ask me why we couldn’t adopt those children. One time we visited an orphanage in India. It was just a quick stop. But he wouldn’t let it go. For weeks he kept asking me: ‘What can we do? What can we do?’ It was shortly after that trip that he was diagnosed. He’d do the most grandiose things during his manic phases. He’d invite complete strangers over to Thanksgiving. He got fired from his first job at a thrift store, because he was giving things away. I was so mad at him. I said: ‘Mike, there’s a system.’ But he told me: ‘Mom, the system is broken.’ When he learned about food injustice, it was all he talked about. He lectured everyone about food deserts. And food apartheid. He was too insistent, really. He tried to get all our neighbors to compost. He thought he could do anything, if he only pushed hard enough. It was always the mania that scared me the most. But it was the depression that got him in the end. Our friend Sally posted a poem on his memorial page. There’s a line that captures him so well: ‘He loved the world hard/ demanded we follow him hard/ in and out of comfort zones/ in and out of danger zones.’ Last September was the 7th anniversary of his death, and that night we saw an Instagram post about a community fridge in Harlem. I thought for sure it was a sign. We bought a fridge that night. The Friendly Fridge BX now serves thousands of people every month. I never realized how much hunger there was in our community. Michael would tell me. He’d go on and on with the statistics. But it was like: ‘Mike, please. I’m cooking lasagna.’ But now I see it. Now I understand. Sometimes we’ll move 3000 lbs in a week, and there’s still people waiting. One of the visitors reminds me so much of Michael. I’m not diagnosing. But he has all these ideas, and all these plans. He only wants the healthiest food. Nothing processed. Nothing canned. And he’ll always ask for extra, just a little box, so he can give it to homeless people under the bridge.”