It’s been just about a month since my boss died. Time persists with its steady crawl towards the future. His name plate is gone, his office has been stripped of his personal effects, yet mounds of paper still sit on his desk, his whiteboard is still scrawled with marker, and he’s still on my Skype contact list, forever offline.
His name comes up in business conversation on occasion. It’s never “Well, that was discussed before [Boss] died and…” or “[Boss] did some work on that before he died….” It’s “Before [Boss] left…” Left, like he went and joined the circus.
I have been asked to fill in for [Boss] on a major project. This made me wonder if, perhaps, I would be permanently promoted. But, alas, the search is on for his successor, who must have more years of experience than I as a manager, a more heady degree than a BA in English, and the ability to talk to a roomful of customers without sweating visibly on the forehead. My boss died, and all I got was this lousy business-critical project.
When I went to his funeral, it struck me how not one word was mentioned about [Boss’s] job. It was all about his love for his family and friends, his passion for his hobbies, and his immense likability. Truly, his job was a means to a financial end. Which is how it should be. When I go, I hope not one person makes mention of my job as a way of summarizing my life. Talk of my love for the written word, for hiking mountains, for XC skiing, for my family and my husband, but dare you not mention a word about software documentation.
