We Lost Her Today, Our Colleague

My last email from her, like most everyone else probably, started out “Hello everyone,” followed always by some message we needed to hear. We are a group that is generally stressed by working crazy hours and so we all needed her. We needed to have reminders of simple things sometimes, delivered in gentle, supportive ways. This is due in two days… this is due in one day…Did you get my message yesterday that this was due today. She was so patient. We were so needy. For eight years she has always been there for us.

 

She is young. When she started this was her first “grown up” job I would guess. We have word today that she has died. If you add eight years to a "first grown up job" it equals "much too young" and not an outcome that anyone ever thought of. We do not yet know how or why.

 

We work in the field of organ donation. We work on behalf of the dying, to keep them living, by talking to the living about the plans of people that are dying. We know this by heart, this work. What loss is. We see it all the time. We are moved to tears by it. And yet, we are feeling this, all of us. This we are feeling. Stunned.

 

She was so lovely. She had a beautiful smile she aimed right at you whenever you saw her. She would widen her eyes and keep her lips closed, ready to laugh if she was amused by your story. She would laugh quickly. She was organized. She sometimes had candy on her desk. She would tell you when her boss had better candy available on his. She had copies of papers you might need before you asked. She showed me Etsy one day, years ago. She loved pretty things and she dressed in pretty clothes and on certain days you would remember how beautiful she was. She was not one to always call attention to it. So some days it would strike you and you would try to remember to tell her when the meeting ended. She was sweetly quiet.

 

She planned parties at the office for engagements and weddings and the babies of others. She collected Christmas money for our group gifts to bosses carefully in an envelope for us. I wish we had held a party for her. So far a life event had not happened for her that called for celebration. That seems for sure to be a life too short. Only now is there reason to celebrate her life. How could it have happened this way? 

 

I was just with my mother and while there we had talked about the custom in my great grandmothers time of not leaving a loved one alone when they died. My own great grandmother, when I was a little tiny girl, had died in her home and was not moved until the next day. Her adult children and spouse took turns sitting with her body overnight as it lay in the dining room. I wished that we knew her family and where she was, as I know many of our team would have been comforted to honor this sweet woman this way, our friend. For we are her work family. Many of our team saw her five times a week for years; had more lunch salads and sandwiches with her than her family might have since she was a girl. She is a part of all of our days for eight years and we are now touched with the sweetness of that.

 

I did not want you to be alone today, dear sweet friend. I wanted to gather with certain others and care for you and wrap you and wait while beautiful music played and candles flickered. We do this for all our families. Mostly the music and candles are just in our hearts, but still. It seems we are missing something not to be able to do it today, for you.

 

We will all leave this lovely earth and so we must really truly live and love in a big open way while we are here. Don’t hold back! Keep your love of others big and bold. Never let people wonder if they are loved by you!

 

I do not believe in rest in peace, I believe in dancing and singing and flying about when we leave this world. I believe everyone leaves at the right time for them, somehow, even as we cannot understand.

 

Maybe Helen Keller shines a light by showing us a way we might see this, for surely we need some inspiration. So thank you Helen Keller, for your uplifting thoughts about your own death:

 

“Death is no more than passing from one room into another. But there’s a difference for me, you know. Because in that other room I shall be able to see.”

 

See how much we loved you, dear Jen.

We hope you can see how much you meant to us.

 

MLR