Gone too soon

My mood over the last weekend wasn’t good as I learned from Facebook that an old colleague of mine passed away due to sickness. I’ve not seen him for over a year, understood from other common friends that he was trying to keep himself away from larger social circles, so what I’d heard about his conditions were 3rd or 4th party info. We learnt that he was taking treatments and we hoped that he would be ok soon….That was our understanding of his status till we heard the latest tragic news…

I wasn’t the closest friend he has but we did have a pretty good relationship while we were working in the same company. We didn’t have a lot of common projects that we worked together, with the limited number of them, I had a very good impression of him for being a good partner at works. Both of us are the type of ‘get the job done’ kinda person. So, we did get along well. Socially, he was a very nice person with humor and was popular among different groups of people. Since we left that company, we didn’t see each other often, a fact similar to with most other ex-colleagues, but the time that we met during some gatherings few times a year among old colleagues, he remained to be the same nice guy as before. On a more personal side, he recommended his ex-boss to contact me as his replacement when he decided to seek another job in other company. So, I did truly thank him for doing me this generous favor as I was trying to seek a career move at that time. We did chat a bit often during that job transition period and we then get to know more a bit about the more personal side of our respective lives.

In the last few years, I did meet him every now and then for lunch to catch up. It is just so sad for me to learn that the news.

Over the weekend, I did think about the time that we talked before. The hopes and plans that we had for the future, etc. Yes, I’m a very rational person that usually don’t let emotion get to me. Also, I’ve experience death in my family when I was a teenager, so death is not a total foreign concept to me. However, I’m human after all. I do have a newer perspective about life for being a father. So, when I think about how would my friend’s living family members felt over the Mother’s day weekend, it was just sad! I hope his parents and his spouse would be able to recover from this tragedy and get back on their feet as soon as possible. It is particularly hard when the dead is young, or being the pillar of a family. As a 3rd party observer, we can say all the right things we want, but life just won’t be the same for the immediate family. Cus, they have to wake up everyday to deal with whatever comes their ways in their waking hours. Things have definitely changed when someone is gone. He will always live in our memory. Sadly, that’s where he can only be…