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Lost in Yesterday

You meet many people in the advertising industry. Smart, crazy, rude, lazy, ambitious, clueless... it takes all kinds of folks to make the ads that you skip. The rarest are the genuinely nice ones, the men and women who smile in the face of unreasonable deadlines, threadbare resources, client changes, long hours and low pay.  

The nicest person I ever had the privilege of working with died in a hospital bed on Wednesday. He was wheeled into the OT for an operation to clear 3 blocks in his heart. He survived the procedure, regained consciousness and met his near and dear ones. Then, he suffered a sudden heart attack and met his maker.

Life was not gracious to this devout man of faith. It did not allow him to grow old, nor grant him the chance to see his kids grow up. It made him live in poverty, suffer a number of cruel personal challenges and watched impassively as he worked backbreaking hours in a thankless job in an ungrateful industry. 

Death did not shake his hand in the OT. No, it waited till his hand had caressed that of his wife's, watched as his children felt that palpable relief of seeing him again and then, coiled bony fingers into a fist and sucker-punched them all. 

Imagine what that must feel like.

Does his niceness provide succour to his family? Will each of them catch themselves in private moments, in the kitchen, the bedroom, touching his clothes, looking at his photographs, missing his hug or his voice, shed a tear and wonder what was the point of him being that good a person for 40-odd years?

Let's say we accept that existence is meaningless in the greater scheme of things, that good men, women and children die every day in many horrible ways, that no one knows what the future holds... dozens of rationalisations that form one limp layer after another on the cake of conversation. The cherry on this cake being that banal thing we all say - life goes on. Except for the nicest man I ever worked with of course.

It's a bit hard to take.

Song for the moment: The less I know the better - Tame Impala

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