Sad.

My manager pulled our group into a meeting at 8:30 this morning to let us know that a co-worker had passed away yesterday.

I didn’t know her very well; we only had the occasion to talk personally a few times, otherwise we just exchanged courtesies during common group lunches and team meetings.   She’d been on medical leave for a year, and then on temporary leaves for parts of a year before that as well.  She’d been battling cancer and a myriad of health problems that come with protracted chemotherapy.  We hadn’t heard anything from her or her family about her status for a long time, and then our manager got the call from her family yesterday that she had died.

My manager had tears in his eyes as he told us, and our admin has been weepy off and on all morning.  Everyone’s really subdued and sad.

The thing about working for a company as large as AcronymCo, is that it seems there is a new “In Memorium” article on the corporate page a couple of times a week.  Just a month ago it was a guy that I’d worked with and even sat next to for years, whom I haven’t had much contact with since I switched organizations.  He was paraplegic (for years, that wasn’t the contributing factor), he was bitten by a brown recluse spider, which reduced his immune system so that he caught pneumonia, and he died.  The day before yesterday there was a “Memorium” notice of a young lady in her early 20’s that died “unexpectedly”.  And now my co-worker’s “Memorium” will show up in the next day or two.

Mortality sucks.