I realize I haven’t posted in over a week. This has been due to being busy, but mainly because I was still trying to come to grips with what had happened. When you find out a colleague you’ve known and worked with for five years has murdered his wife and child followed by himself, you’re left with too many questions and just not enough support.
The hardest thing I found that first day of the news, was trying to keep up a brave front in order to be “strong” for my employees. I wanted them to know I cared for how they were feeling and making myself available to them (and anyone else on my floor) who needed to talk. Unfortunately, while I was too busy doing that, I wasn’t really able to express my own concerns and feelings to others. I tried doing so with my “peers” but as they hadn’t worked with him as closely as I (and I not as closely as others) they couldn’t understand.
A week of introspective thoughts while attempting to get as much information as possible led me to discover who it was in the company who had received the phone call telling them, “______, do me a favor, when you get this message, call the police”. I’ve often wondered at my own reaction to that kind of a message. Heck, every time one of my employees calls me or leaves me a very early morning message, I worry. The message could just as easily have been left in my voicemail box. Truthfully, six months from now, he could have been reporting to me for a specific project.
As I said, this has been a very busy week -made more-so because I had forgotten that Wednesday and Thursday I’d be out of the office on a First-Aid training course. The course was really great and it feels wonderful to be empowered with the knowledge of possibly saving a life. I’ve always been one to go out of my way to help people, and this gives me an extra tool to be able to do so. Anyhow, one of the other students (and another friend of mine (another divorced-dad-fighting-for-his-kid)) was there. He had also worked closely with George having spent many nights on system migrations with him. He was just as confused and disturbed as I was and also admitted to not being able to talk with anyone else around him. Luckily, we were able to talk with each other and it helped the both of us.
I did find out one other piece of information which began to help make better sense of things. In a note left behind, George wrote that the had been diagnosed with cancer. He knew he was going to die and he did not want to leave his daughter (whom he adored) with his wife (who suffered from major psychological problems) since they could not get along at all and fought constantly and they had no other relatives here. His solution was murder-suicide.
It’s the worst possible solution I could ever think of. I obviously don’t know the stress and burdens he had to endure for the last 17 years, but… wow. I’m still in shock, but at long last it’s slowly fading. I still “see” and even “hear” George, though (as I mentioned before, he was one of the last people I saw when I left work on the day he went home to do the deed) but I’m moving on….