Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Loss

I lost two friends over this weekend.

Vivian, the office manager where I work had struggled with respiratory illness for some time, in and out of the hospital. She had several close calls but always bounced back. She was a tough one.
I will miss listening to her sisters laughing to the point of tears as she told one of her stories. She was an expert on letting them get just to the edge of recovering from a fit of giggles and then plunging them back into laughter with the next line.

I was walking out of the office one day, teasing her as I went about her collection of angels. "Why are all the angels white?" I asked my Latina friend. "Aren't there any Hispanic angels?"

She didn't miss a beat. "Just one." she answered, smiling.

My boss called me Christmas Eve to let me know that Vivian had died. I had weird dreams all night about coming back to work.

When I came in this morning I found out that one of our salesmen Danny Peoples also passed on Saturday.

I wrote a poem about Danny last year around this time. Danny lived through strokes and heart attacks and countless knee surgeries and dialysis and he just would not stop working. I loved talking with Danny. Death is bad, life is good, work hard, be a good person. Danny had it figured out.

Some weekend. Sheesh.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Man I am really sorry about your loss. Even more so for their families.
I had been sitting here thinking about my own problems. I found out on Wed. I have some weird eye swelling thingy (that is totally the technically name for it :) which is squeezing my optic nerve. They have had me one IV steroids for 3 days, so I go from crying to laughing, to cleaning, to feeling bad in a nano sec.
My problems are small compared to that. Now I must rest my stupid stupid eyeballs.
Hey you are the few websites I did check in my limited time here. much love and I my heart goes to the families of the ones you have lost.

KLJ said...

Thanks. And I'm very sorry to hear about your fun wiht eyeballs and steroids. I'm on 20 mgs myself right now, so I know them steroid blues.
I don't think our problems you problems are stupid.
I do feel much for these families. Vivian's family is very tight and she was their leader, the matriarch.
Her son is awesome. Poor kid lost his dad to a senseless act of violence when he was much younger and now at 17 he loses his mom. But he went to her, hours before she died and told her it was okay to let go, that she had done a good job and the he promised her he'd be the man she wanted him to be. What a man. I can't express how impressed I am with him.
Thanks again.