Thursday, August 21, 2008

That's Life

I was sitting around having coffee at 730am just now, hardly blinking and looking only half human when an old colleague from my previous department came over. Haven't spoken to him in a long while. As we get into the normal routine small talk and the infamous "How are U".........i noticed that he has this far away look. I took notice of this and cautiously asked him if everything is alright. He informed me that his wife passed away about 2 weeks ago and today was his first day at work.

What a bummer! Not the fact that he has lost his 'everything' but of all people I was there. Me.......who don't really know how to be compassionate with others and who's awkward at giving empathy towards them. What do I say?

So I didn't........and I asked him if he'd like to talk so that I could just listen. When he said no.........I sat there anyway and we drank our coffee and at the 11th hour, I gave him a hug. And when he's ready we both went up the stairs to your offices and back to real life.

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