Death of a work colleague

Havent had a death at work that I can think of - have had at school though (students and teachers) and it was indeed quite the shock.

I had a friend who worked on a show out here in L.A., and a guy he worked with died on 9/11 in one of the planes. Wednesday morning, the exec producer posted a note around the office that said "yes, this was terrible, but we have to finish our work." He said a few people quit because of that note and the timing of it.

In 1987 we lost a bloke to cancer at age 28. We knew he was ill, and for a couple of years before he went there had been a grapevine of news circul;ating that he was doing well or not so well or whatever. As a group we were all fairly close, same ages, most of us flunked out Uni students, all lived out the same side of town, we went on weekends together, went boozing Fridays, all that sort of stuff.

We were never more cohesive and considerate of each other than the week or so after the funeral. Then over the next few months it all went absolutely haywire, and took a couple of years and another crisis (this one directly affecting all of us, the department was ceasing to exist) to really bring us back together.

We (family, friends, colleagues) had a memorial service for him, complete with an open casket (which was spooky -- he was 27 years old, looked an indeterminate age all altered and screwed up in the coffin), and I for one never really felt like anything good came of his death, nothing (in spite of all the usual platitudes).

Oh, he also enjoyed messing with stage lighting, it intrigued him. When I got home from work after we heard of his death, I told my partner and we went for a walk under a starry sky. Suddenly, while I thought of him and his recent stage lighting fixation, I looked up and saw the flickering green trails of the Aurora, something that's reasonably rare this far south.

This has happened again a few times in the intervening years, the Northern Lights appearing at moments of incredible intensity (death, loss, sudden change). As a rational skeptic I have no idea what to make of this, but it happened, that's all I know.

But, back on topic, you'd think a "social services" type agency would provide something tangible for its workers after a death as unexpected and sorrowful as Don's. But no, nothing really. No counseling, no acknowledgement at all.

[As an aside, whenever the media jumps on this concept of closure, I wince. for a family whose child has been abducted and murdered, say, there is never any "closure". By suggesting that the capture and subsequent incarceration of the perpetrator will bring any kind of "closure" is a cruel lie based on nothing at all, it's bullshit. (End sudden rant)]

(I realise "how do you carry on" sounded a bit melodramatic, by the way, I was struggling for a better turn of phrase like "how do you continue to operate the office when there's a big part of it missing" kind of thing.)

Ailsa, can empathise, but you seriously have no need to feel guilty about your lack of grief: as you said, you weren't close to her. That doesn't keep you from regretting that a fellow human being has passed on.

My wife is away traveling for work this week and she suddenly got an email with a red! exclamation mark from the company VP here in LA calling her whole team into his office in 30 minutes. They've had some layoffs so everybody started freaking out and she kept calling the office to find out what was up but nobody knew. Turns out a co-worker who was out for three months with pneumonia had come back to the office for a week and then suddenly died. So everybody got to go through the horrible guilty feeling of being relieved that they still had their jobs but tinged with remorse over the death of their co-worker. All of this while my wife is out in the field and can't get any info about what is going on.

And then they all get a company PDF forwarded to their email about "coping with the death of a co-worker".

Corporations suck.

Also this woman was in her mid-30s, married, two young kids, not serious health problems before.

NO serious

horrible

Very nice lady in her mid-thirties, two children, collasped on her way to work two weeks ago and the EMTs couldn't revive her. Not only tragic but completely out of the blue.

One of my colleagues has been out on medical leave for months already b/c of pneumonia -- actually she was in the hospital for months and has been on home leave since. Scary stuff. Could easily have been one for this thread, I observe in retrospect.

Manager of a different branch of my last employer died really suddenly last year, went into hospital complaining of a sore stomach, died of cancer two weeks later.

We never got any leaflets or anything.