So, a co-worker of mine passed away recently and it is making me feel a bit weird. Let me explain, but I need to tell you first that I might be unkind to this person in my writing today. Not because I am an evil person, but because I am not a believer in revisionist history. I will tell the story as I tell every story, from a Steve Rogers POV with a tiny smattering of artistic license. Feel free to go away if that is a problem for you.
I had never met Monroe (not his name as always is Saga policy) when I began hearing stories of his lethargy and outright laziness. The stories ranged from simple laziness to outright sessions of sleeping at work in some hidden room I imagine was similar to the George Costanza bed underneath the desk in Seinfeld, but less comedic and more of a sad reality. While I have never slept at work, I will say I felt a mild resentment at this stranger for a) being able to sleep at work and b) for being paid by the company my future hopes of a retirement are tied to while doing so.
I heard his voice the first time on a conference call with my team. My team is spread across sites in many states, so our meetings were virtual and over the phone. He sounded tired to me but maybe that was just the comedian in me wishing I had someone on the team I could share my snarky thought with on instant message. But alas, as was first identified by Ms. Aaronson in the 2nd grade report card, I don’t always play well with others. Tee hee. I think I resented him right away, (Is that wrong?) him being all “Monroe’s here”. Whatever, Sandman. Sometimes it is easier to hate from afar. Other times it isn’t.
We worked (I use the term loosely in his case) on a project or two, but never had occasion to really get to know each other til he had occasion to come to AZ to help us train a class or 7 in late 2014 through summer of 2015. In that time, he and I had a handful of lunches and I regaled him with talks about my newly evolving family life and he mentioned his daughter as being the same age as Flower, the 13 year old daughter of my fiancée (did I not mention that before? Well I will talk more about that another time). He listened with his pupils a little dilated and I am 100% sure he was saying a silent prayer in his head that his daughter not ever be on Snapchat or some other similarly evil spawned piece of social media. You and me both sir, you and me both.
I saw quickly, more examples than I wished to, of what others have perceived as laziness, but I came to think of as him being burnt out. He, as I soon learned, had been in training for over 15 years (sound familiar?) and had begun to take on a less than perfect attitude towards his chosen career. He once told his SME, (stands for subject matter expert and I assure you in some cases the title is accurate, and in others the title ranges from unwarranted at best to an abomination in others), “It is my job to train. It is not my job to make them learn.” I can think of nothing that is farther from the job description if I tried. It IS our job as trainers to eliminate obstacles to learning for those that want to learn, so I guess he might be correct if taken literally, but I can only assume he didn’t mean it that way at all. (On a side note: Am I not totally in love with the long, but not run on, sentence? Yes I am.)
His last visit to AZ he seemed out of sorts, but I never mentioned it or asked. I was basically indifferent. He was just here to help me because I couldn’t be in two places at once, as I looked at it, and I was probably resentful that I knew when he left he would be back sleeping again in short order, and I was going to be starting a class as soon as humanly possible. The classroom looked like there was a fire drill and they just never returned after he left. I was pretty upset and was going to mention my displeasure to our mutual boss, when I heard he was going out on FMLA and would not be returning for the class he had scheduled in a few weeks. I was both pleased and a bit concerned as I was then told he was being sent to Texas as “Doctors in Monroe, Louisiana were not equipped to help him with their outdated technology.” Curious.
I was given a new schedule and new people to come help with training, but one day I saw he was logged in our instant message program, and I was relieved. It was two days later I received a text that we had a team meeting at 6:45am and it was mandatory. While taking role of attendees I heard my boss’s boss’s name and I swallowed my tongue a bit, wondering if this was to be my fourth lay-off from the biggest bank in the world, only to find Monroe had passed away overnight.
On a more serious note:
You might be asking why I am writing about a person I had an obvious level of disdain for. As I mentioned I have a burgeoning family and a new fiancée. I am in a really good place both mentally and emotionally for the first time in so long I care not to give it a time frame. I love them all and am looking forward to a life with them all in it. A long life. His passing made me question my own mortality, and I feel like shit because of it. I took the passing of a husband, father, brother and provider for others and made it about me…and I can’t stop.
I’m imagining a world where it was me that passed. I wonder what the conversations would be like between those that knew me, those that don’t at all, and those that think they do. Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer got to attend their own funerals. I wonder, if I was a fly on the wall, what mine would be like. Who would cry, who would be honest and who would lie. Who would say nice things and who would say, “He was (insert random nicety here), but if I am being honest he was also a bit of a (insert random crappy comment here) _.” How will I be remembered? I want to see each of my stepkids’ walk down the aisle. I want to hand the boys some nugget of wisdom that I hope will matter to them if not that day, then some day and the girls hand to some very deserving (and hopefully law abiding) suitor and watch them grow into the amazing adults I know they have inside them. I want what Monroe will never have, a future.
I am crying as I write this (not really a shock to many of you, my bride-to-be included, as she has seen me cry during cartoons, so tears during this heartfelt little ditty should not shock her one bit), and I am going to end. I want Monroe to hear this in his afterlife and know I cared about him deeply, if not correctly, and I wish him a happy eternity. In a few of our talks I gleaned he was a very respectful Christian and had a deep love of God. From what I have heard his family will be looked after until they can join him, just hopefully not any time soon. Nap while you wait for them sir. I know you are missed.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
I was also I think in that last class in May, I spoke with him and his group, reading your blog today it just make me feel the same.
I was also I think in that last class in May, I spoke with him and his group, reading your blog today it just make me feel the same.