I am cleaning up dishes after getting my kids to bed when the phone rings–of course I allow my auto-phone assistant pick it up. Over the machines speaker I hear the voice of one of my oldest friend’s wife. Immediately I am thinking, this can’t be good. She never calls, I really only hear from her husband, specially since they moved down to Florida. As I listen to the message, my initial reaction comes true; My friend Mike Laux passed away Sunday night from an over-dose. So it goes.

Of course I called her back, after a few minutes to let the news sink in. It’s not that it’s unbelievable that it happened, it’s just nothing you ever actually want to hear. The worst part of the problem is that he was originally found by his eldest daughter, who ran to her mother saying that, “Dad is lying on the kitchen floor with blood running out of his mouth.”

Goodbye Mike, you will be missed.