So, I was going through some moving boxes (I still have millions of them to unpack) and found a bunch of goofy photos of friends of mine from high school and college. So, I succumb to the pop-up advertising and I head over to classmates.com. I register with the site and start looking for my old friends. While I'm at it, I discover a couple of non-commercial alumni sites, and I post there looking for these old friends, as well.

Well, this morning I decide to get online to check my messages. Lo and behold, I find three of my old friends. I get a phone call from one, and emails from the other two, and I'm ecstatic. Then, I log into one of the non-commercial sites to see if there's any action there, and what do I see? In the "In Memoriam" section is the name of my best friend from high school.

The guy in question was one of the best human beings I've ever met. He was born with cerebral palsy (CP) and walked with a shuffle-limp. One of his legs was somewhat deformed but it never slowed him down for a second. He was a gold-medallist in the Special Olympics for show jumping (horses) and he'd have been on the real US Olympic team, if it hadn't been for his leg and his health. He was hired by the McDonalds Corporation as a manager at age 17, not bad for a high schooler. He also had the best, most optimistic outlook on life that I've ever come across.

We were never romantically involved - just best friends. I know that we could have been more; he wrote me a love letter telling me so. However, he also noted in the letter that he didn't want to mess up what he (and I, too) considered the most perfect friendship he had ever experienced.

I graduated from high school a year ahead of him and moved onto college and a career in politics. He climbed higher in the McDonald's management chain, becoming a corporate district manager by the time he was 19 or so. Despite the CP he had a bright career future ahead of him - he was intelligent, hardworking, and willing to meet any challenge. We drifted apart a bit, mostly because I was focused on becoming the next Young Senator...until I met my now ex-husband. He met the woman who would eventually become his wife about the same time I started bopping around the country because of my new job in thea video game industry. We occasionally lost track of one another, but we did manage to hook up here and there, whenever our paths happened to cross.

The last time I saw him was shortly after I had my first child in 2001. We said we'd definitely keep in closer touch with one another - we promised to call, to send email, to write letter to one another. I always meant to get back in touch with him but somehow, I never found the time. It was always "I'll try to find him next week/next month/next year", but I never did.

After finding the note on the alumni board about his death, I finally tracked down his brother and left him a mesasge asking him to contact me immediately. It turns out that my friend died FOUR years ago, and he and his family have been trying to find me ever since. Everyone at the funeral apparently kept asking whether they'd been able to find me, even one of my old high school rivals who hated me. His mother, who has some mental illness issues, calls his brother's girlfriend by my name. It turns out that his brother posted the message on the alumni boards just so I would see it and hopefully get in touch with him.

It seems that my friend choked to death. His wife was supposedly upstairs taking care of their two children when he decided to grab the last bite of steak that was on his dinner plate. He swallowed wrong and it lodged in his throat. His wife never heard a thing and by the time she came back downstairs, he was blue. He was pronounced dead at the hospital some time later.

The surviving members of his family aren't entirely convinced that his death was an accident. Neither am I. Normally, I don't subscribe to conspiracy theories or enjoy soap operas. That being said, I think they might have something here. His wife hated me from the moment she found out I was alive. He was convinced that I was out to steal her husband, despite the fact that I'd always tried to be friendly to both of them as a couple, rather than he as an individual. There's talk in the family that she cheated on him, and I personally know that they fought often. I know his children meant the world to him, which is why I'm guessing he didn't want to go through a divorce. He was loyal to her the entire time they were married, as far as I know.

My friend carried an insurance policy worth $150,000. The circumstances of his death were strange, at best: his wife found him on the floor, blue from lack of oxygen, and instead of calling 911, she tries to resuscitate him herself. Failing to clear his airway and bring him back to consciousness, she ran to the neighbor’s house for help. They returned with her and tried to resuscitate him, as well but again, had no luck. The wife finally called 911 for assistance, some 15 minutes later. Instead of sending the local fire department which was no more than a few minutes away, the fire department in the neighboring city responded...which coincidentally, is where her brother works. By the time they got him to the hospital, it was far too late.

Because of the suspicious nature of his death, the ME held the body for an inquest for two weeks to try and confirm whether foul play was involved. Unfortunately, it could never be proven that his death was anything other than an accident, so the wife got the $150K payout from the insurance. She took the money and moved to Hawaii with the kids, where she has family. His family now neither gets to see the children, nor do they get any information on their well-being.

So in the end, my dear friend who had amazingly survived well into his 30's with CP, was one of the strongest people I knew, and had the best attitude on life that I've ever seen (even though he had every right to be angry about the hand life had dealt him), died from choking on a piece of meat. I can't even begin to express how pissed I am that he's dead and that I wasn't there for the funeral. I feel like a total shit for having lost contact with him, and that it took a stupid message board for me to find out that he died.

Fate can bite my left nut (if I had a left nut to bite, that is).