The fundamental goal of this site is to provide advice or guidance on a given topic. Structurally, I do that by offering a number of tips for a clear problem statement from learned experience.
For this article, I don’t have that. This topic is heavy, complex and to be honest, I’m still figuring it out as I write it. So thanks for bearing with me on this journey. By giving me this forum, by being an open ear, you’ve allowed me to grieve just a little bit more. I’m grateful for that.
To appreciate this story, we must take ourselves back just 4 months to Feb/March.
I was seemingly crushing my role as a consultant at Aux, leading a high-powered team for an enterprise-level client. So much so that my awe-inspiring CEO, Kasey, had mentioned to me privately a promotion that I hadn’t even advocated for. I was taking that momentum in my personal life, happily engaged and ready for a cross-country to move to SF. Both personally and professionally, I was fulfilled and ready for the next chapter.
That’s when life took a different turn.
It started with a cataract surgery-gone-bad in mid April, with a prolonged recovery that threatened a marriage ceremony that Ava and I had been planning for months.
Then came the loss.
I was on a train back to Charlotte, having finally recovered fully from the cataract surgery when I got a late all-hands meeting invite. The update was blunt, plausibly impossible and instantly painful. Kasey had died, in a tragic accident on vacation with her family.
I still remembering feeling the gravity of that moment. My shoulders instantly bore the weight of what felt like a cancer diagnosis. My heart, racing from the impossibility of the news and selfishly, the implication on my career and on the company. My eyes, crying unapologetically, softly, for everyone else on the train to see.
In the ensuing leadership change, I didn’t adapt well to the new CEO, who couldn’t have been more different than Kasey, both in spirit and energy – ultimately leading to my layoff.
On top of that, our dream of moving to SF turned into reality, and I was in charge of moving our townhouse and dog, Stella cross country.
The next chapter was happening, I just wasn’t in the driver’s seat.
In fact, I was unequivocally the passenger: unemployed, sad, and grieving so many different things at the same time. I was always in the drivers seat. I was losing my sense of optimism.
But it got better. Not overnight, not at some ‘lightbulb’ moment, just small pieces every day.
That’s the reality of grief – grief humbles you with time itself.
You won’t feel better until you are better, and you grow in such small increments that you may miss the growth entirely if you’re not paying attention.
I think that’s the lesson I gained from all of this. I may have seemed like I was in the drivers seat, but I never was. And all my successes and failures were a result of the cards that I was dealt.
The impossibility of the moment will move us like a current, we can’t fight that.
The more we do, the longer that the grief stage will feel.
There’s a scene in one of my favorite movies, Good Will Hunting, where Matt Damon is explaining to Robin Williams how he doesn’t want to see this girl-next-door anymore because she represents perfection right now, and seeing her more might tarnish that.
Robin William replies with “You’re not perfect, sport. And let me save you the suspense. This girl you met, she isn’t perfect either.”
I feel that way now about bad luck. We can’t avoid the impossibility of the moment, whether good or bad. To think we can, is naive.
Our move to SF was as unceremonious and unromantic as I could’ve drawn up, but what was the alternative? To think there was an alternative goes against what Robin Williams said. Perfect or not, this was my journey.
But there is light at the end of the tunnel. We cannot control what happens, but we can control what we do after, and how we carry ourselves from it.
The eye surgery I mentioned earlier? I was actually still able to make my wedding, and I married the most beautiful woman in the world – puffy red eye and all.
And about Aux, and Kasey? I think about her almost every day, and I’m so glad to have been in her presence when she was here. I promise to honor her quirkiness in my own way. I love ya, Kasey.
And about that unemployment? Well I’m happy to say I’m starting my dream job next Tu…. haha yeah, not so soon. I’m still looking, but hey – I can’t fight the timeline. I’ll get a job when I get the job, and if I can carry this moment with pride and openness, I can confidently say I made the best of this moment.