Work From Home Couple

We suffered a death in the family today. After two years of battling cancer, one of the truly nice guys, my brother’s father-in-law, passed away today.

I’d gotten to know this man only a bit during the last three years. But he was always brave, always ready with a quip and always quick to smile, even as his cancer grew worse and worse.

My sister-in-law’s family will bury him this weekend, after the Thanksgiving holiday. It’s a terrible way to spend the holiday. Fortunately, the family members had made their peace, and were prepared, as much as you can be, for the sad day.

It’s hard to stay motivated when someone you care about dies. Even if that person isn’t a close relation, it feels somehow fake to work. Does something as final and powerful as death expose how truly inconsequential most of what we do at work is?

That may be a depressing thought, but it’s a hard one to avoid. I write a lot of stories for magazines and newspapers that I know have little to no impact on anyone’s lives. They’re there to fill up the space around the ads. This usually doesn’t bother me until something truly important — like the passing of a good man — occurs.

But the bills do need to be paid, so work will progress. I suppose that’s how it happens with all of us: We grieve, we reflect and we get back to our lives. And work, briefly exposed as being rather hollow, becomes important again.

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