Early last year, I thought about M one of my former colleagues and wondered what he was up to lately. His work email which he preferred for communication bounced but his LinkedIn profile still showed him employed there. Layoffs were happening there at the time and I wondered if he had been impacted.
Since I did not know of anyone who was looking to hire for M's skills, was not sure what I could contribute immediately. That did not feel like the right time for idle chatter and a mostly pointless check-in. A few days ago, I learned completely by chance that M had infact passed away by the time I received that bounced email (and thought more time should pass before I checked in on him). He had infact taken his own life a few months prior.
The news hit me hard and having worked very closely once. It made me wonder about how little we know (or care) about people we work with and claim to respect and admire - all of this was true in my case. M did not hesitate to call bullshit on things and did not fear consequences. He spoke truth to power and held on stubbornly to well-reasoned but unpopular opinions.
For all those reasons, he had many fans in his peer group - I was certainly one of them. And one day he became a bounced email and a person like me imagined he needed time to process his layoff. It was like he never existed or mattered to anyone. I read his obituary where his work at the said company was highlighted as one of the achievements he was known for and proud of. That really left a really rotten taste in the mouth for me.
Over the next few days, U reached out to others who worked with M and me during my time there. They had heard to sad story but none saw it coming even those that met him a few days prior to his death. The company had treated this is as a non-event. No one talked about it, there was no remembrance - nothing.
One day M had become a bounced email - no different from any number of other bounced emails - people being let go, fired, quitting, retiring, some dying perhaps. All lumped together in one big bucket of irrelevance - no longer driving measurable business value. They had been processed out of the system.
Last time we chatted, M mentioned his trips to India working for some non-profit there and how much he adored the country and wouldn't at all mind settling there for good.
This was not based on a random soul-seeking trip to India taken by a foreigner. He had not decided that the country could offer him salvation in time. M had been around for years, worked a regular job, lived in an apartment in a mundane neighborhood, commuted by public transportation. This was the real deal, understanding what it really takes to live and survive in India. There had been a resonance between this man's soul and my motherland. I wish he had acted on his desire to go make that country his home - maybe he would still be alive.
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