I’ve taken today off from work. My boss, whose cross I am to bear, was
very amenable to my request, and to the other twenty-six or so that I launched
on the same day, seemingly a man on a mission possessed by his purpose. ‘twould
be nice were it to be true but the motivation is far more prosaic.
Historically, I
end up with truckloads of earned vacation time at the end of the calendar year
that I lose because I haven’t taken it, and it’s never upset me. Actually, it
still doesn’t, but I’ve had incentives in the last few months, some not-so-gentle
prodding, really, to re-examine my nearly-lifelong perspective of defining who
I am by what I do for a living. For a FARC, I’ve been a terrific WASP.
I’m not really playing hooky since I asked for the day,
though I hope I can be forgiven if I hope a little too loudly for nice weather
as part of what (for me) will be a three-day weekend. I see it as a head start
on another road marker on the highway of life that runs through our Ant Farm
with Beepers.
A colleague, he was working in the organization I joined
after we arrived from Germany in October 1991 (I am resisting the urge to italicize and underline the month
and year because it is really quite some time ago), called it a career
yesterday at close of business. As I recall, when he mentioned months ago that
he was retiring, in a galaxy far, far away, he had started working on the first
of August and he’s always been a fan of symmetry.
We shared the same first name and worked on the same
floor of the same building for much of the past twenty-odd (and often, oh were
they!) years, dealing on a regular basis with sincere and earnest folks popping
up before our respective desks actually looking for ‘the other Bill’ which is how we
eventually took to referring to one another.
He was much more organized and vastly more polite and
thoughtful than I am or shall ever be. I offer that in the interest and desire
for accuracy; I’m not jealous, nor am I competitive. That on Monday when I
return to work, there shall no longer be an
or the other Bill will slowly sink
in and by next week’s end there will be no sting of absence at all. Well,
hardly any.
I took my leave of him and he of me yesterday with mutual
assurances to take care and be well of the kind that two men in their sixties
offer to one another. I extended my best wishes to him and to his family, more
or less notionally, as I have always assumed he’s married and has/had child/ren
though I have no personal knowledge of any of that because neither of us
existed outside of work.
I’m realizing that we will never see one another again,
at least in this life, after having seen one another for practically every
working day of the last twenty-two years. That's taking a little more getting used to than I thought it would. People
often change but memories of people can remain.
-bill kenny
No comments:
Post a Comment