I never thought it would end this way. That you would be out of my life forever, and I never even said goodbye.

I saw you the day before. We were laughing and talking about the cruise we were going on the next week, we even made plans to have a slice of pizza at midnight every night on the ship. But the next day all of our plans were ruined.

June 8, 2008. I had just finished curling my hair for my select soccer team’s end of the year banquet when my mom’s cell phone rang. As her face began to lose color and her eyes filled with tears she informed my family that we had to leave right then. We drove in silence over to my best friend, Ashley Cottrell’s house, where she was busy getting ready for the banquet too.

Arriving at her house our parents told us to go upstairs because they needed to talk in private. That’s when it finally clicked that whoever called my mom had delivered some big news. Ashley and I sat on the couch in her playroom for what seemed like hours trying to figure out what the phone call was about, but nothing we thought of came close to the news my dad was about to deliver.

“The banquet it canceled,” he said. “This morning Mike was hit by a drunk driver and killed him.”

At that moment I burst into tears. I didn’t care that makeup was running down my face or that I was ruining my dress by wiping all of the tears and excess mascara off on the straps. I had no idea what to think, or how to react. Instead, I sat there silently crying next to my best friend.

Mike Alfaro was the type of guy that was always happy and loved life. He wasn’t afraid to live his life, he was fearless. He was the father of one of my close friends, Paige Alfaro, and was someone who I am extremely lucky to have met. He was the person that would help pull the best pranks at soccer tournaments.

But then that one day changed everything. He went on a morning bike ride with Meredith Hatch when the two of them were hit. The impact was so hard that some of their arms and legs had been separated from the rest of their body. I drove by the scene of the accident a couple days later, and that was something that will forever be engraved in my head. I would describe how it felt to see all of the damage the accident caused but words cannot even come close to the feelings I had at that very moment.

A couple weeks later a funeral was held in Mike’s name. Only this wasn’t a sad funeral, instead anyone had the chance to say the good things they remembered about Mike- that is what he would have wanted. The girls on my soccer team at the time all got to the funeral early and pulled one last memorial prank on his bike. We took some of the pranks that we had pulled that year and combined them in one. Instead of Seran wrapping and post-it noting teammate’s cars, we pranked his bike, which was then parked at the front of the room next to his casket.

As the funeral progressed the soccer girls sat next to one another, all matching in our black uniform jersey’s and jeans. We came together as a team that day. Unfortunately something bad had to happen to achieve this, but in the end I realized that maybe Mike was taken from this world so he could share his laughter and happiness with God. Now he was able to watch over Paige and Lisa and the rest of his family and friends, and protect us for the rest of our lives as we lived in honor of his.

I kept my promise on the cruise ship. Every night I had a slice of pizza, and I know somewhere up in Heaven Mike was having his piece too.