Small World
So the former coordinator who passed away earlier this week...Turns how he wasn't just my work family, he was a blood relative. His mother and my great-grandmother on my dad's paternal side of the family were first cousins. So all those years he and I worked together we didn't even know that we were first cousins thrice removed...or something like that. haha
And isn't it just the way? You go through your whole life thinking you know things and then realize you know nothing. Of course, it doesn't help that the side of the family we are related on is the side we have also mostly always been estranged from. the only way we found out now was that Mama was talking to my step-grandmother and mentioned my former colleague's death. My step-grandmother worked on campus for several years before she retired so she knew a lot of the same people that we did. but because we were estranged from her and my granddad for so many years, she never really knew who all I worked with. According to her, though, my former colleague's mom and my great-grandmother used to visit each other frequently before his mother passed away. Of course, my great-grandmother has been dead for...over 20 years, I think?
But it would have been a hoot if we'd have known back when we worked together. He was always carrying on about something with me. I can only imagine how funny it'd have been to pick at each other about being cousins.
Back in the old days when I was a young twenty-something, I used to eat lunch in the staff lounge with him and another male colleague I was buddies with and we would watch The Bold and the Beautiful together after we ate. A lot of the times the guys would fall asleep while we were watching and I'd have to wake them up when it was time to go back to work. But he would always look up the recaps of the episodes when he got back to his desk and then send me spoilers from a spoiler site for the next episode. We had plenty of deep(ly silly) discussions about how Brook (one of the main characters) was likely to give birth to her own great grandchildren someday. Both of the guys had strong beliefs about which of the actresses had actual acting talents and were wasting their time on a soap opera and which ones needed some acting lessons.
We disbanded our little lunch group long before he retired and the other guy left, though. Work and responsibilities have a way of sucking the fun right out of the day and all of our responsibilities changed right around the same time. But we still joked about the show when we saw each other and he'd tease me about my interactions with my supervisor at the time who I had a love/hate relationship with and who he strongly disliked. He would have gotten a real kick out of knowing we were distant cousins.
*deep sigh*
His funeral is Monday and it's going to be hard to say goodbye. If anything good has come from his death, it's the fact that it's put me back in touch with the rest of my old work family. I really well and truly miss them all and it's been good to reconnect.
And isn't it just the way? You go through your whole life thinking you know things and then realize you know nothing. Of course, it doesn't help that the side of the family we are related on is the side we have also mostly always been estranged from. the only way we found out now was that Mama was talking to my step-grandmother and mentioned my former colleague's death. My step-grandmother worked on campus for several years before she retired so she knew a lot of the same people that we did. but because we were estranged from her and my granddad for so many years, she never really knew who all I worked with. According to her, though, my former colleague's mom and my great-grandmother used to visit each other frequently before his mother passed away. Of course, my great-grandmother has been dead for...over 20 years, I think?
But it would have been a hoot if we'd have known back when we worked together. He was always carrying on about something with me. I can only imagine how funny it'd have been to pick at each other about being cousins.
Back in the old days when I was a young twenty-something, I used to eat lunch in the staff lounge with him and another male colleague I was buddies with and we would watch The Bold and the Beautiful together after we ate. A lot of the times the guys would fall asleep while we were watching and I'd have to wake them up when it was time to go back to work. But he would always look up the recaps of the episodes when he got back to his desk and then send me spoilers from a spoiler site for the next episode. We had plenty of deep(ly silly) discussions about how Brook (one of the main characters) was likely to give birth to her own great grandchildren someday. Both of the guys had strong beliefs about which of the actresses had actual acting talents and were wasting their time on a soap opera and which ones needed some acting lessons.
We disbanded our little lunch group long before he retired and the other guy left, though. Work and responsibilities have a way of sucking the fun right out of the day and all of our responsibilities changed right around the same time. But we still joked about the show when we saw each other and he'd tease me about my interactions with my supervisor at the time who I had a love/hate relationship with and who he strongly disliked. He would have gotten a real kick out of knowing we were distant cousins.
*deep sigh*
His funeral is Monday and it's going to be hard to say goodbye. If anything good has come from his death, it's the fact that it's put me back in touch with the rest of my old work family. I really well and truly miss them all and it's been good to reconnect.
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