In Your Absence

This week another friend left the office. Without a word or warning, he was gone. The news of his departure came as a shock to everyone, most especially to me. Returning to the office today, the air was heavy and still. It was as if the walls and everyone within were holding their breaths. Stunned. Like a punch in the gut, we were collectively gasping for air.

Everyone pushed through the day wearing plastered smiles. People busied themselves – heads down, working hard, near silent – faces betraying the confusion inside. And no one – NO ONE – mentioned him.

While I was away, they’d quietly gone through his office and tried to erase his presence. After seven years there, four in that little nook in the corridor, they went about the day as if he never existed. But I remembered. And as I made my way out, closing up shop for the week, I found myself in his office, something I tend to do with each of the coworkers (friends) who have now since left the office over the months.

I took inventory of the state of the near sterile room. New was a sign taped to a chair reading “Please vacuum and dust in here.” Gone were the piles of wires and cables, programming CDs and manuals. Gone were all the little kitschy souvenirs sent to him over the years – the carved wooden turtle from his brother’s trip to Greece years back, the beads from the office Mardi Gras celebration the year before – everything about him had disappeared and was replaced by a trash bag slumped in the corner.

I stood there for a moment and looked out the window, recalling the sound of birds and the sweet smell of rain that would waft through the halls when it was too warm in the office and he’d decided to crack the windows. I slid by that wall I spent many a day propped up against as we shot the breeze; walked past the table where I would sit my things on occasion when my hands were full and the 5-minute check in quickly became a 30-minute conversation, sprinkled with laughter and stories. I made my way to his desk and remembered the times I sat against that corner as he’d walk me through a problem I was having with my computer or the latest collection of photos he’d taken. I looked at the now empty chair and nearly cried. The weight of his absence still teases, still haunts.

As I sit typing this, the glow of dusk slowly seeping into evening, I wonder what’s next. For me. For him. For us. There’s a hope that we’ll continue these conversations and our lives will still intersect, but I just don’t know for sure. I’m realizing all too well that I’m more sentimental than I fear; that absence doesn’t necessarily make the heart grow fonder in every situation, or for everyone. That we all get wrapped up in our own little lives and our attention to those in the periphery becomes less and less a concern. So many slip through the cracks. So many already have. I hope this will be spared. Only time and grace know for sure. But for now, I miss him.