my toast to you

Today must have been one of those cosmic-ly fucked days. My daughter felt it, I think. So did our blogger friend Jenn. A lonely day, trying to sort out why we're alone. But for me, it was a sad day. A couple days ago my boss died and today I found an article about him online in the local newspaper.

He was only 72. To the whipper-snappers, that's old; to the non-whippers, that's not old enough. He was a huge presence. A smart and generous man, a great guy to work for which is illustrated by the fact that I worked for him for nearly 20 years. He challenged and trusted all of us. Especially women. He didn't discriminate, thinking that data analysis was a "man's" job. He gave us chances, no matter that we weren't trained in that field or were "mere" secretaries or transcriptionists.

In addition to being a surgeon, he was a programmer. This is how it would go: He'd come up with a new program to determine ROC curves or the method for creating Bayesian Tables or whatever, and he'd gather us around and he'd show us how it worked and me and my co-workers would nod and go "wow, that's awesome" and then he would leave and we would look at each other and say "what in the hell was he talking about?" and we'd sit at the computer and figure it out. We always figured it out. He trusted that we would.

When I left my city girl life, I was sad to leave him. I guess I thought he would always be around, even though he smoked, even though he got lung cancer. He was so strong, I thought he would beat it.

It seems silly to mope about being alone and loneliness. What must it be like to wake up one day and your husband of 50 years is gone? If the world seems different to me - an employee - just think how his wife and five kids and sixteen grandkids must feel.

Here's to you, Oh Favorite Boss 'o Mine! You made all of us better and smarter people.
Salud.