Our professional lives are a bit odd, aren't they? We spend so much time interacting with those we work with, and yet, for most of us, we limit (or are forced to limit) how deep we really go into those relationships...
While thinking of content just now, I absent-mindedly clicked over to a social media account of a colleague of mine who died about two years ago (wait... maybe three?... god, now I don't know and feel terrible about it!) In looking at his social media, I am filled with the knowledge that our relationship was really only surface-level. I barely knew him. He was a really decent guy though, and it is still so odd to think that he isn't on this planet. It's so much easier for us to think that anyone in our professional lives have just moved on to another opportunity...
Although, depending on your spiritual outlook on death, I suppose maybe he has just moved on to another opportunity.
But I digress...
I think I have written about this in previous post.. death of a colleague is a really weird realm because of our frequent-but-not-deep contacts. In the professional world, where we like to box things up neatly, it's no wonder why death of a colleague is a disconcerting one. It doesn't fit in a nice box. I can't think of this colleague as having an impact somewhere out in the world. I know he's not there. And yet, I don't feel like I have the license to actually grieve... I barely knew him.
Death is funny like that - our social context adds all the meaning... the act is the same.
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