The hardest week of my professional life

Until now, I’ve always said the hardest thing I ever had to do as a manager of people was to tell one of my 1099 employees that I had no more work for him as he’d had a psychotic break at a client site. I had to tell him that until he got help, we couldn’t send him on jobs. But that’s no longer the hardest thing I’ve gone through as a people leader (as we call it at work).

Last Saturday, I got word that a woman who worked for me had died the evening before. She hadn’t been sick, she was in reasonably good health, she just . . . died. 

People talk about work families and normally I roll my eyes hard at that idea. Work is work, family is family, and the two rarely co-exist. If they do, it can often be a highly dysfunctional and toxic work environment.

My team isn’t that way, and I take little to no credit for this. Four of them have known each other for nearly a decade; they take care of each other’s kids or house sit or go out on the weekends. Our birthday celebrations at work are full of fun, love, and affection. Take my word for it, this is an unusually tight team. So, to have Mary die like that was even more traumatic than usual. 

This past week has been a blur of emotions, tasks you just never think you’ll need to do like figuring out how to reach her mother so Benefits could talk with her, notifying everyone she’d worked with over the years, being there for my team, and also dealing with my own emotions. 

Her funeral was Thursday. She’d already been cremated so there was no casket, which was hard for some of my team as they’d hoped to actually see her to help them accept that yes, she was gone, and this wasn’t some insane prank. I think we all secretly hoped it was but of course that wasn’t the case.

On Friday my new director, Ro (who herself has only been my director for a couple of months), planned a virtual celebration of Mary as we haven’t yet returned to working in the office. We invited everyone we could think of who might want to come and share a memory of her with all of us. As part of getting to know us, Ro had asked us all to fill out a little “getting to know you” survey, and she shared what Mary had written. That virtual celebration was a good way to end an awful week. I miss Mary, I can hardly believe she’s gone.

Where I've been the last month

Two days after my mother-in-law died, I fell while on a hike with my younger son. You see, we’d had a second family trip planned this summer; this time we were going to the LA area to spend time with Ben and his family. 

Kent obviously couldn’t go as his mom was declining rapidly. As with the Memorial weekend trip, I offered (and offered a lot) to also cancel the trip to LA and be with him that week. He was clear he wanted me to go, so again I listened to what he said would be best for him and I went. 

The day I fell was the day before I was supposed to fly home. Ben and I had gone to Malibu Canyon to hike Sandstone Peak. This photo is at the start of the trail.

We took a shorter route than the one mentioned in the link, because our hike was about three miles total. It was a gorgeous day, I loved spending some time with Ben and had no problems up or down the steeper bits near the top. Nope, I fell later on the way down—hit some small loose rocks that might have well been ball bearings and down I went. This injury is called a FOOSH (falling onto outstretched hand) and can break the scaphoid or other bones. I’m lucky because my scaphoid did not break; instead I broke my wrist. I’ve got a distal radius fracture of my left wrist.

Let me tell you, it’s amazing how much you need both thumbs, even the one on your non-dominant hand. Typing, for example, was super hard especially with the first cast I had as it immobilized my thumb. I’ve been learning to do things mostly one-handed and I will be very, very glad when my wrist is healed. I go back on August 20 for the next round of x-rays, which will be about six weeks after I fell. Here’s hoping I will be cleared to get back to normal activities.