For Robert, Ahmad, and a rogue planner

No one can replace you when you are gone. New people will come to the fray, with their own ideas and contributions. But you alone are unique in how you impact the world and the people around you. Even in the habitrails of my institutionalized life, are there like 5,000 people who work in Salem (I can count that many looking out my window at the marble ediface buildings).

Now, September is upon us. The leaves collect on the patio, on the cement steps. There is no one here in the early morning to sweep them. There is no cheery smiling face to greet me. The leaves collect. There is silence.

The times I spoke with you are precious few. But I miss them. This is for Robert.

I appreciate that you swooped in one day in tornado mode and cleaned out all your things, leaving me space to grow my own bureaucracy. However you left some things behind. A business card in the drawer - I'll keep that in memory. A drawer full of old office supplies. Is that a flowchart template? Clearly you weren't put on this earth to be a programmer, since real programmers don't flowchart (no, they design, build, debug, and eat little chocolate donuts. They do not hack).

If I am brave later I will see what other vestiges lurk in the drawer from your previous life. But my plan at the moment is to pack my stuff and leave your legacy supplies for the office gods.

Then there is the time capsule corner. The stack of immovable binders, some with infamous green bar reports, stuck wedged between book shelves, file cabinet, desk surface.

Others will remember how you saved the state's employers, unemployment trust fund, and collapse of Western civilization by your creative actuarial policies. I will remember the stuff you left behind. The stop watch I salvaged (Can I time how long it takes to pass new legislation?). Or the time I spotted you on the mall, the vision of someone else needing an espresso fix after lunch, and the vision that after those interviews I would have a new job and be your colleague. This is for Ahmad.

I first learned about how entrenched each line of a project schedule is. But somehow you didn't fit the mold of your peers. They were entrenched all right, but material planners have a role to play and without materials no one could design, build, test, or ship widgets sooo... Yes that is one view of the world.

You were open, I remember actually talking to you, which is not something I can easily say about your peers. Open to working with other groups, hey.

But your real life also had nothing to do with work. You were not content with the way you were put on this earth, it didn't make sense to you.

I cannot begin to understand the transgender world or how people are so distressed and unhappy that they feel they must, and I guess medical science now makes this possible, switch genders.

Even a goal like that does not always work out (did the doctors give you disclaimers?) Unable to live in your assigned world, unable to achieve the world you intended, you took another option - you opted out.

I also cannot begin to understand how one person can take their own life. Don't they realize they are connected to the rest of us - or am I being selfish. I could not possibly understand your pain, but the pain of the 100s who attended your funeral, the multitude of work colleagues, was real. This is for George.