knew this was coming for the past two weeks, but last night I sat
here after a gruellingly long day at work and cried as I wrote him a
letter. Knowing how unbeloved my long emails are to my coworkers, I
wanted to keep it short. After rewriting it a few times, though, I
decided to grant myself the rare luxury of the whole page. It was,
after all, to be a parting farewell to an awesome person who will be
sorely missed in our department. In addition to being fair-minded,
proactive, and a visionary, he's got an entertaining sense of humour,
deep brown eyes, and a wonderful singing voice. I still remember
when I was going through a bit of a spiritual revamp a few years
back, and without telling him why, suggested that he sing Amazing
Grace. He was behind a server, but the next thing I knew, I was
frozen in place with tears rolling down my face, as if God Himself
was speaking to me through that voice, which resonated around the
server to flow around me in a gorgeous embrace of acoustic
perfection. Yes, in a fan-infested server room, God touched me
through song.
I don't think he ever saw me, and I never told him about the
experience brought on by his willingness to sing that song. But I
will never forget it as long as I live, because that moment
reaffirmed my faith. There are precious few moments in my life where
I hear God's tune resonating within me like that.
Memory aside, I finally penned the letter to my satisfaction and
folded it carefully into a plain envelope, on which I enscribed his
name. Yesterday morning at 6am, I went in to work and placed this
letter on his fast-emptying desk. Then I sat down to work. He came
in later and saw it, began to read, and turned to ask me if it were
mushy and whether he might get all teary-eyed reading it. I told him
he ought to read it later, and so he said he would and tucked it
away. Later we had a going away party for him. I ate at the front
of the room away from the crowd, avoiding him for fear of clinging to
him and blubbering all over his shirt. (I am known to be this way
when someone leaves, and this one is a particularly difficult event
for me. I wasn't taking chances this time, especially since it's my
boss.)
So, the party dissipated and I pretended nothing amiss was about to
occur. I went back to work and proceeded to discover a laptop with
spyware on it toward the end of my day. Had to reimage it pronto, so
I gathered it up and began the process. Since no image existed for
it, I had to reinstall XP from scratch. My state of mind was a bit
of a goner so I forgot to gather the drivers before doing this.
Sigh! So I spent about 7 hours on installs, updates, and drivers.
6pm came and went. 7. 8. 9. 10. Finally at 10:30pm, I gave up on
the last two drivers and made an image of my new creation. Then I
tweaked it for its user, deposited it gingerly on her desk, and
booted it from the docking station - just to make sure the wireless
keyboard and mouse would work. It did.
I ambled off about 11pm or so, quite moody but relieved to have that
mess out of my hair.
This morning I came in late - 10am - and saw that our boss was still
wandering around cleaning and organizing his work for whomever may
take his place. Good, I thought, I'll still have my chance to say
goodbye in person. At some point he took notice of me and leaned
over to indicate he'd read the letter. He said he planned to frame
it. I don't know if that's true or not but I was touched and glad he
appreciated my words, for I felt they were totally lacking in the
depth of feeling I had experienced over the past several years. I
felt a slight smile touch my face in acknowledgement and he went
away, leaving me to my work. Of course, for the past two weeks I've
been calling him a traitor, so I saw no reason to desist. Each time
I saw him pass by, I'd raise my voice at him: "Traitor!!" A
coworker talked me out of that word so I began saying "Defector!"
instead as the afternoon slowly drew to a close.
That was the last thing I said to him. I got called away for a
while, and when I returned, I found an order slip on my desk. I
wrote a code on it and turned to get up, to place it on his desk as
the last thing he might sign for me. Suddenly a hollow chasm filled
my heart as I noticed that his desk was just too empty. "He...
didn't leave already, did he?" I croaked. My coworkers told me that
yes, he had.
I know - consciously - that this is OK. I know that he'll be happy
moving on, learning new things, overcoming new challenges. It's not
like he's upped and died or anything, and it's not like he and I were
best buds, either. I mean, it's totally illogical to feel such a
deep-seated attachment to him, right? Yet I felt my shoulders slump
as if they'd hit the floor. I melted into my chair, dumbfounded,
fighting the tears that started rolling down my cheeks anyway.
Finally I had to leave, so I found a restroom and just stayed there
for a good portion of an hour, unable to make myself presentable.
Despite my disappointment towards not getting to say goodbye, I
believe that God knows best, and that my being called away before
such a thing could occur was a blessing. Perhaps the blubbering
would have hit me harder if I'd hugged him in an appreciative
goodbye, shook his hand in sad congratulations and watched him
leave. I think he's gotten the jist of all this without the drama,
you know? Thank goodness for pen and paper!
Well, the blubbering hit me hard, and I've had a headache ever
since. This happens. The headache got worse throughout this evening
and peaked about an hour ago. You know - nausea coming in to keep it
company. I popped an Advil and...
got a terrible hankering for tomato soup.
So, I did a brief perusal of tomato soup recipes and decided to do this:
1 boullion cube
2 cups boiling water
1 can (6oz) tomato paste
1 tsp Oregano
1 tsp Basil
1 cup of milk
1 cup cooked rice
French's fried onions
Dissolve the boullion cube in the boiling water. Add the tomato
paste and blend with spoon until it's all dissolved-like. Add
oregano and basil and stir in. Stir in the milk. Stir in the rice.
Get some of that into a bowl and add some of the fried onions for
added texture and taste.
It came out far better than I'd expected.
So, I'm sitting here writing this, eating tomato and rice soup,
sipping on meade, and listening to one of my favourite songs:
Amazing Grace. As soon as this entry has been posted, I shall retire
to bed and await a whole new day.
~nv
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