What Goes on in my Head, Part Whatever Plus One

Last Thursday, I got pinged at work by my a coworker who'd I'd worked with for the past several years. He was alternately a friend and mentor, and was my boss for about 3-4 years.

"Hey Red, when you get out of that meeting you're in, call me."

"Sure," I replied.

"Good. If I'm in a call, ping me. We need to talk."

I began to get an uneasy feeling about the directness of his words. I knew that one of his grandkids had childhood cancer but had finally beat it after a few years' worth of chemo, and the first thing I thought of was that her cancer had returned. Then I thought that he'd been canned, but I figured that he'd just retire at that point.

My meeting ended, and I pinged him. 

He called me immediately.

"Hey buddy," he said. "Kristy* died yesterday."

I believe I blurted out a "What??!!"

"Yeah, I said the same thing when I heard the news. Since you and her had been really close over the years, I wanted to make sure you heard it from me."

You see, Kristy had been my boss for a decade, and before that we were coworkers on different teams and frequently worked together when there were security related issues. Even after she'd moved on to another position, we'd chat every three to six months just to catch up on how we were doing. 

I'd known her for close to 20 years.

My friend informed me what had happened. She'd been in a Teams call when she suddenly became unresponsive**. At times like that, my company has procedures if people think there's an emergency, so her boss called for a life squad and tried to reach her husband directly. By the time the life squad had arrived and gotten into the house, however, they found her slumped at her desk by her laptop.

She'd suffered a massive heart attack. The life squad had attempted to revive her without success.

My friend was going to reach out to some of our other old coworkers, but the emails had started making the rounds already. I reached several of my old teammates --some had heard and some hadn't-- and some of them were really torn up over it. I had to just console them as best I could, on a Teams call with some of them a half a world away. As of now, there's still one member of our old gang that I've not been able to get a hold of, but that's because he's apparently out of town.

***

As for me, I'm just numb.

I kind of just unplugged this past weekend and crawled up inside my head for a while. Kristy was nine years older than me, and was already looking forward to retiring after a couple of more years. 

I've already buried a parent, and I know that other parents will be following soon due to their age, but this is different. She was a friend and coworker, a contemporary of mine. We both grew up in the same part of town, so we had similar experiences, albeit hers were in the middle of the Disco era and mine was Hair Metal. Working for global teams like we did, it was like we were the only people who got our jokes. She was also good at giving me advice, and if you were ever in trouble or something, she had your back.

On Sunday night I tried logging into WoW for a while, but I just wasn't feeling it so I logged off and curled up on the couch until I finally drifted off to sleep. Last night I logged in, found my Questing Buddy, and we had a long chat. She was patient and read my messages, and was simply there for me. 

***

I found Kristy's obituary, and the family isn't having a service, so I'm using this as an attempt to say goodbye. I'll miss you, kiddo.

*Not her real name.

**No, we don't put our cameras on for almost all of those meetings. I'd rather not end up on the wrong end of a viral video clip.