Lessons Learned From Grieving Over A Co-Worker’s Passing
It has been nearly one year since a co-worker of mine past away and an impossibly young age. I’ve wanted to write something about what I learned going through that experience which resulted in a 2,000 word article that I’ll probably never publish. However as I’ve been writing more this month I’ve realized his death has played a significant part of 2018 for me. Not a week goes by where I don’t think about him whether it be in a minor or more significant way. So these are a collection of some of the lesson’s I have learned from his passing.
Life Is Not Rational
As an engineer I deal almost entirely with logical and rational situations. When that’s your day to day experience it bleeds into your perception of the world and life as a whole. In an industry that will lean heavily towards young employees (in any industry where demand outweighs supply you’ll see this) one of the last things ever on my mind was that I’d ever have to deal with the loss of a co-worker. In reality though people die everyday. That person you said hello to in the hallway today may not make it back into the office ever again; that’s impossibly heavy but viewing interactions in that way hopefully makes you appreciate them that much more.
I won’t say that I’ve become grossly morbid in 2018, however from time to time these thoughts do cross my mind. I was kind of an asshole in that last meeting, if I were pass away later today is that really how I’d want to be remembered? While I still fail to check-in with co-workers after difficult meetings I think I’ve gotten drastically better at this than I was just a year ago.
I’ve found myself focusing on my own health more this year. While I’m planning to write about this in further depth later on, I want to summarize some things that came up in 2018.
- One night I had severe chest pains out of nowhere. Over the course of a few hours I had cold sweats, pain shooting down my arms, and according to Google I was having a heart-attack.
- Towards the end of the day at work I had shooting pain in my head, this was the worst headache of my life. I had to sit at my desk motionless for several minutes before it got better. According to Google this was probably a brain aneurism.
- For more than a month I suffered from severe GI pain. It started on my left side but within a few days it was mostly on my right side. According to Google I probably had appendicitis.
In all of those cases I took advantage of my health insurance in one way or another. The heart-attack ended up not being one (or at least from the tests they did it wasn’t). The brain aneurism wasn’t, the CT scan came back perfectly normal, I just had a bad headache. The appendicitis wasn’t, the MRI came back with no obvious issues in my GI tract. While I still have issues with my stomach I have a colonoscopy scheduled early next year to finally get to the bottom of that one.
I guess what I’m trying to get at with this is all of these situations came and went. It would have been easy enough to put them off or just forget them. However keeping in mind that life isn’t rational it forced me to view life in a different way. Today I take my health much more seriously than I ever have in my 28 years of life.
No Regrets Is Bullshit
While the phrase is well intentioned, it’s complete and total bullshit. If you regret nothing then how do you learn anything? Part of my job for the last three years now was to mentor other engineers, and the best way for an engineer to learn is to make a mistake and learn from it. If an engineer continuously makes mistake without regretting that choice then how are they going to internalize what went wrong and learn from it?
No regrets is detrimental in the grieving process as well. That’s not to say you should beat yourself up or blame yourself over anything, I don’t think those reactions are mutually exclusive with regret.
I regret that this article barely uses the word “friend”. While I wish we were friends, I worry that it’d potentially be lying to myself to say that. We didn’t talk to each other often, I can’t say if I had to buy him a gift I’d know what to get him, the connection just wasn’t there. This isn’t on him either, there were plenty of opportunities for me to meaningfully connect with him and I just got caught up in life and thinking there would always be other opportunities. So I wish I could say I was his friend, however I don’t know if that’d be fair. The friendships that I have been working on this year are a direct response to this feeling of regret though, and I think that’s a good enough reason to have that feeling of regret. As an aside, I feel really weird writing this paragraph. Is this going to come off as disrespectful? I certainly hope not, but those thoughts were definitely going through my mind as I wrote this.
I regret not letting him know how much I appreciated him. I come from a family where showing affection just doesn’t happen. My father and I hadn’t ended phone calls with I love you consistently until after he moved out of Illinois several years ago. So it is a weird emotion for me to share with others, and I don’t recall ever telling him that I appreciated how happy he was and how he was able to make any situation better. I like to think that I’ve done a better job at letting people know I appreciate their work and what they bring to work however it’s still a work in progress.
Living with regret is fine. If focused in the correct way it should move you forward as a person. For myself the output of this regret is also a strange way to mourn his passing as I’m changing for the better as a person because of this regret. For that I will never forget him, I worry if I truly didn’t regret anything I wouldn’t be writing this article today.
We’re All Here For A Short Time
The difference of passing away in your early 20s or late 90s seems fairly minimal when compared to the geological clock. Of course in our timelines there is a lot that can happen in those 70 years. You’ll probably find yourself getting married at least once, you may raise a family, maybe you’ll start a successful company that truly changes the world. Regardless of the accomplishments you achieve in life though, I think it’s important to appreciate just how short life is, and ensure you do your best to live every day in the best way possible.
Corbin Rangler passed away far too soon. He was an amazing person, and while I haven’t been consistent I have done my best to live and love like he did. While I wasn’t able to thank him for all he has taught me I hope that sharing this with others will help. If you found this article beneficial then do me a favor and please donate to the Corbin Rangler Memorial Fund.
