Modern Day Ozzie and Harriet

"Oh, my god, Greg didn't tell me you're beautiful!" This was my introduction to our friend Greg's girlfriend, Laura, at Thanksgiving. A tiny, pleasant woman, she washed the pans as I was cooking ("I'm Greek, you know; my father did the cooking while my mother and I cleaned...") and polished my nails an hour before dinner so I wouldn't feel like I'd been working all day.

Greg called Thursday afternoon to say Laura was dead. She overdosed on Wednesday night. He thought she was "clean"; she was shooting heroin when he wasn't around.

We took the kids to the funeral. You hear of overdose deaths. You don't see it happen to someone you know. We've always told them that if they get involved with drugs, we will disown them. As broken up as Greg is, they now really understand: drug users aren't hurting just themselves, but also those around them.