Death
Not interested in a downer? Then feel free to go ahead and skip this. Frankly, and I don’t mean to be rude here, but I am not writing this for you, I am writing this for me. This will be lengthy.
I don’t keep a journal and I don’t ‘blog’ but I have recently realized that there is a healing power in writing and I am taking the space here for a little healing. This weekend, first thing Saturday morning, I received news that two of my two co-workers were killed in a one-car accident. Keith was 22 and had a 3 year old son. Louis was 26, had recently started to really get himself straightened out, and for the first time in his life, felt like he was on the right track, doing the right thing. His last words to one of our Senior Managers were, “Don’t worry, you can count on me.”
OK – Take a breath.
I have two problems right now. Problem number one. I am pissed. I am completely and totally pissed at Keith. He liked to drive fast, and he was doing so; weaving in and out of traffic when he lost control of the car. There is no way around this. It. Is. His. Fault. And if I could, I would beat his ass. Maybe it is totally selfish. Maybe I am just pissed because on Saturday when I tried to write a firm-wide e-mail, it took me an hour to write one paragraph because I could not stop crying long enough to simply type “He loved his kid.” And damn him again, because it fucking took me 10 minutes to type it out this time. He loved his job and he loved to talk about technology. But when he was alone with me, the only thing, and I mean the only thing we talked about were our kids. And he always started that conversation. He wasn’t perfect, he didn’t live with his son, and frankly, because of that, he would have always had challenges raising his boy. But he was well on his way to being a good father. Instead, he was stupid. He was careless. He was selfish. He was young. And now he is dead and the world, and more importantly, one little boy is without a good father, who could have been a great father. That’s what I am really pissed about.
Poor Louis. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. The fact that Louis was there, the fact that his family has to deal with Keith’s carelessness, well, I can deal with that. Don’t get me wrong, I feel for his family and all of his other friends. I grieve for Louis without a doubt. But I have reconciled his death with the fact that sometimes accidents happen, and sometimes bad things happen to good people. And while I hate the fact that he is gone, and I hate the fact that his death is affecting some very dear friends so much, I am finding solace knowing that he was innocent. Life is not always sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows.
So problem one is that I one minute I am pissed at Keith, the next I just want to be sad and grieve, and I am having a hard time figuring it out.
Some of you may have picked up on some of my earlier posts that I work for a tech company. We have about 45 employees and in general, most of the employees are young. This leads to quite a bit of partying and except for Christmas parties where apparently I make a fool of myself, I generally don’t partake. (The last Christmas party was at the CEO’s house who lives on the water about two blocks from my house. I’ve been told that I said, “I have wasabi at my house, you catch a fish, and I’ll eat it right here.”) It’s not that I don’t want to socialize, it’s just that a) I’ve done all that, and b) I have a wonderful family that I like to spend time with. But I do feel a strong connection to these people and I am finding it difficult to reconcile the fact that I want to say I am close to them, I feel close to them, but I really don’t spend any time with them outside of work. Here’s problem number two.
I take my family for granted. Not my wife and kids so much, although I probably take them for granted to a certain extent, but my “family-family” - Mom, Dad, Aunts, Uncles. I don’t call, I don’t write.
I take my friends for granted. I have people that I have known for over twenty years. I used to call them friends. I used to call some of them best friends. Can I call someone a friend if I haven’t talked to them in years? And now I have lost two friends who I took for granted, and that cannot be undone. I see all of my co-workers, and I see how close they are to each other, and I hear them talk about how much time they spend together and I am jealous. I am jealous that I am not included in that, but now I am also afraid that I am going to miss something that I will never be able to get back. But as I write this, I realize that I have the opportunities to be with them. I get most of the invitations. But do I go to a bar on Friday night, or hightail it across town to be on time for the 6:00 soccer game my kids are in? That is not a difficult decision for me. And so maybe I just need to accept that I can’t be BFF with everybody, and frankly, if you try, it is not sustainable. What I need to do is focus on taking time when I can. I need to go out to lunch with them more, spend more time shooting the shit. I have to do something more, because this is not a normal place to work. The people here care for each other more than any other place I’ve worked at. So how do I let them know how much I care about them when I feel like I can’t really spend any time with them? This is really not a big problem, I’m sure it is just a matter of making a conscious effort for a small amount of time and then new, good habits will form. But I hate that it has come to this.
Why have I had to wait until two friends have died before I understand that friends cannot be taken for granted? Shouldn’t I have learned this by now?
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Pat, this is a terrible tragedy and I feel for you. Just try not to be too hard on yourself. You obviously touched their lives in a positive way. However much more you may feel you could have done, you can take comfort in that.