Today marks the closing of ten years I worked for one man at one company.  And today he told me he is leaving the company.

I had a feeling he was leaving.  Certain things a person does, such as removing a couple of keepsakes from his office after having them there for 10 years makes a person suspicious.  I had other signs of imminent departure, and from looking at his calendar, I even pin pointed it for this week, the week after a 10-day vacation.  He also had a 9-day vacation last month.  That was odd behavior.  After working for someone for so long, you get to know regularities about the person.  He wasn’t much with people skills and frankly, we rarely talked about anything personal, but he was a good person to work for, and I will miss my daily interactions with him.

After he told me, he asked me not to say anything to anyone.  I needed an outlet, so I took a walk outside.  Since I started working for this company, we moved buildings just a couple years ago.  So it was funny that during my walk, I passed a restaurant that he took me and our group out to when I first started working for him.  It was a celebration after an annual meeting.  We were all just fairly new with the company, one year or less.  Except him, he had a few years under his belt by then.  The restaurant was barren now.  Like so many shops and restaurants in this area.  Empty shells with signs begging for occupancy.

I am an emotional person.  I’d go as far as saying above average emotional.  So when my boss told me he was leaving, keeping my tears from flowing for a good minute really impressed me.  However, that didn’t last and once they started, they would periodically return depending on where I let my mind go.  It is sometimes difficult to stop my mind from going places when everything around me is work related, and of course, inspired memories.  So he let me go home at lunch time to stay home for the rest of the day with a huge headache I’d come into.  I’d woken up with a sinus headache, and this news enhanced it tremendously.  Even though I had my suspicions, I was not mentally willing to accept his leaving as reality.

So this brings me to the conclusion of all this.  The feelings I have are close to the feelings I’ve had when mourning the loss of someone close to me.  It’s a death of sorts.  Or to put it more lightly, a divorce of a relationship.  He doesn’t know how long he will be there at this point.  I guess that will be determined by the upper echelon, which makes the scene a little difficult.  I will see him for who knows how long wondering, “Will this be the last day?”  It’s like a prolonged euthanasia.  To further my plight, I have no idea if this company will see the need to keep me or not.  Will he be replaced or not?  And neither does my boss.  Er, my former boss.  Boss in transition to non-boss.

There is a lesson to be learned in all of this and I thought about that in between the pounding sensations in my head.  Then I got out my DVDs of a Lanny Basham seminar and decided to watch all four DVDs during my afternoon, but I only made it through the first.  I took notes and listened to it twice.  I think I’ve been letting life happen to me more than making a life for me.  But that is another thought which I have to work through.

Good-bye today.  I woke up with the routine and security I’ve know for a decade.  Tomorrow?  Who knows.