— चार हजार छह सौ छियानबे —

Holy shit, the last day or so has been a prime example of how quickly things in life can change. Someone who has been around for just about as long as you can remember, snap! they're gone.

Let's start with Auntie Rose—who, just to be clear, is not gone just yet. But it seems clear she will be soon, and honestly, the way things are going, I won't be surprised if she passes either before or during Shobhit's and my trip to Australia. We leave on Monday, and will be gone for two weeks.

But, Valerie did send this text to both Sherri and me yesterday afternoon, at 2:14:

We have a new game plan this afternoon. Mom will be receiving hospice at the Port Townsend hospital, with the goal to provide her with as much comfort as possible for her remaining days. This is just a lot to process, given that 2½ weeks ago she was moving around with her walker and bossing us around. We are grateful that this is an option for her and that we won't need to move her again. We welcome all prayers that Mom be at peace, and for Dad and the immense grief he is experiencing.

My first thought after reading that was, Wait, what about you? The grief you are experiencing? It's never easy to know how to respond to a text of this nature, but I still wanted to make sure Valerie knew she also had our support. So, I replied: And for you too, as well as the rest of your family ❤️

Just a few minutes later, Valerie texted, Can you share with the rest of the family? I was kind of unsure what she meant by this, but also didn't want to be insensitive about asking her. Surely she has plenty to deal with a dying parent without being too concerned about this, although honestly, just about anyone I could share it with would be on Facebook, in which case most those people would be getting updates from the fairly regular posts Valerie has been sharing. But, I also don't have a bunch of family members' phone numbers either. It occurred to me that just a regular, public post about Auntie Rose's status, at least by me, would maybe not quite yet be appropriate either. I figured I should still get the clarification and asked, Like on Facebook?

She replied, Yes - for the McQuilkin chat group on Facebook. Thank you.

This left me even more confused. What "McQuilkin chat group"? Is there one that already exists, that she doesn't realize I am not on? Is there a McQuilkin Facebook page I am unaware of? There's a surprising number of others . . . none of which appear to be for the McQuilkins in the Puget Sound region. So I thought, okay whatever, I'll just send an update to extended family via Facebook Messenger, including a few I am no longer Facebook-friends with for unrelated reasons: siblings, cousins, an aunt and an uncle. I did not bother with any of my nieces and nephews, none of whom really ever knew Auntie Rose. She was already my great aunt; she would be their great-great aunt. In any case, I sent to 14 people, including Shobhit who I only thought to add to the thread later. People like Aunt Raenae or Aunt Penny are not on Facebook, but their children are so they will definitely get the news through them. And so I sent this message, which included a bit more of a summary of Auntie Rose's situation over the past few months, which should serve as a good refresher for any readers here as well:

Just so you are all informed and up to date: Valerie asked me to pass on the latest on Auntie Rose, who is about to go into hospice at the Life Care Center of Port Townsend, to make her as comfortable as possible in her remaining days. For those who don’t know, she has been having medical issues in recent months and just last fall needed radiation treatment for a benign tumor, and much more recently has begun to decline rapidly, with no known direct reason. According to Valerie only a few weeks ago she “was moving around with her walker and bossing us around.” Valerie welcomes all thoughts and prayers for Auntie Rose and her family in this incredibly difficult time for them.

(Many of you may have already seen this in some of her recent Facebook posts, but it’s possible many of you haven’t. So, at Valerie’s request, I am getting the word out to as much of the extended family as possible.)

And indeed, even though my cousin Toni has surely seen some of Valerie's posts—I know her husband James has, as he has posted some comments on them—even she replied that she had not known about hospice, so that alone indicated it was useful for me to send the message. Honestly, I don't believe any single one of my cousins were as close to Auntie Rose as I was (we're all grandchildren to Grandma McQuilkin, who had been Auntie Rose's older sister, by eight years), but they surely appreciate knowing what's going on. And of course, when it comes to any of my cousins' parents, Auntie Rose is their straight-up aunt, so some of them perhaps have greater claim of "closeness" with her than I do.

Every time I spoke to Valerie last year, though, she would mention how Auntie Rose talked about me all the time. So that made me feel good.

— चार हजार छह सौ छियानबे —

— चार हजार छह सौ छियानबे —

The other thing is the news I got when I arrived at work this morning, which still has me reeling. Someone in my department, who has worked here slightly longer than I have—making it 18 years—has been terminated. I won't say who, because I know the person would not want me to. I already have a complicated personal history with this person tied to that very thing, me sharing personal details in my blog, on LiveJournal like a decade ago, that said person decidedly did not appreciate. So I guess if you really wanted to you could figure out who I'm talking about, but you would have to do a lot of digging.

I received an email from their personal gmail account, sent to my PCC account at 7:46 yesterday evening, so I did not see it this morning. I’m not sure if you heard, but PCC terminated my employment today. So I just wanted to say goodbye since we’ve worked together for 18 years. No, I had not heard! That amounted to about half the email, but I have to say I really appreciated getting the heads up. We've already had an all-department meeting this morning where the announcement was made officially, but it lasted all of five minutes and was all business and of course revealed nothing about what the reasons were—which of course I am dying to know, and will probably never know. Knowing it's also really none of my business also does not make me any less eager to know.

Darrell, the VP of Merchandising, began with, "Some of you already know . . ." No one in the room seemed surprised. I'm so glad I got that email first, though. Otherwise, when I got that news in the meeting I would have about shit my pants. But basically all he finished with was, "[name redacted] is no longer at PCC." Justine, Center Store Director, added that "Of course we'll be posting for filling her position pretty much immediately." And that was it, basically. No one asked any questions. Neither Darrell nor Justine asked if anyone had any questions. It was just, This is the deal, and we're moving on.

The broader result has been that it's been a rather surreal morning for me. I haven't been this thrown for a loop by PCC related news since I learned our former CEO, Tracy, had died. I'm getting the distinct feeling that something bad and negative went down, especially after I moved that email over to Gmail and responded from my own personal account, and got one more reply. Just the tiniest bit more information, but nothing that fleshes out exactly what happened. Only that the whole experience for the person in question has indeed been unpleasant and distressful. And if it were something far more benign than some kind of conflict, then the meeting would have indeed included more detail: moving on to a better opportunity, or whatever. As I said to Scott this morning, learning someone plans to leave in a few months or even in two weeks is one thing. Finding out someone is gone effective immediately is quite another—especially after 18 years!

And it makes me wary of my own job security as well, to be perfectly honest. Maybe not all that rationally; I immediately messaged Sara J via Facebook this morning just to see what I could find out, but also well aware that anything confidential, she could not share. Apparently she's just in the dark as I am as to the reasons why this happened, anyway. I felt better after talking to Scott this morning, before the meeting even happened (he did say he expected there would be said meeting), and he said he would fight tooth and nail to keep me around if there were ever the suggestion that my job was at risk—because he and Noah would be totally fucked without me. Ha! Rule #1 for job security, I guess: make yourself indispensable. Come to think of it, this person had indeed moved to another sub-department within the past year or so, and had she still been working her previous position, this might not have happened so easily.

. . . And, this just in! To my amazement, Justine actually came over to my desk literally while I was writing all this, just to ask "How you're doing." And then we had a little discussion that actually made me feel way better. In fact, although she did not divulge any particulars of any, let's say, inciting incidents, she still filled me in on way more than I would ever have expected. Probably more than the person who was let go would really want, honestly. But broadly speaking, she made it clear that, behind the scenes, this was not so abrupt as it would seem on the outside. Opportunities were given, or at least attempts were made, to allow for an environment in which this person could continue working here. In the end, I guess, it just didn't work out. Still, 18 years is such a long time—and that was something Justine made clear she particularly understood. She said she was going around to a few people she knew worked with the person in question a long, long time—as I have—and basically "debriefing." All I can say now is, that made all the difference in the world, for me at least, and I really appreciated it.

Also, just one other point to make about my own job security, which my brief discussion with Justine really underscored: If I ever had any risk of getting fired, I would absolutely have far advanced warning, and there is no way I could plausibly regard it as coming out of left field (as opposed to when Stephanie nearly fired me at the beginning of 2003, which was very much out of left field—but PCC was a very different place then, at least when it came to how personnel matters were handled). I would get warnings and multiple chances to right whatever things I was doing wrong. Considering I have not gotten so much as a warning about anything whatsoever, it seems pretty safe to say I'm sitting pretty right now. I mean, I'm pretty regardless, but you know what I mean.

— चार हजार छह सौ छियानबे —

With all that out of the way, I guess I can tell you that soon after I walked home from work yesterday, Shobhit gone home from his shift but just came to pick me up and I rode with him over to the Total Wine & More store in Bellevue. He had managed a special order that got him a coveted bottle of Pappy Van Winkle's 20-year-old Scotch. He did not pay quite as much for it as I did the bottle of tequila a year ago, but it was still the second-most expensive liquor I think either of us has ever purchased, and according to Shobhit, if he were to re-sell it on a place like Craigslist or something, it would go for a lot more than my tequila would.

We came home and watched a few episodes of Cheers on Netflix before I went to bed.

— चार हजार छह सौ छियानबे —

[posted 12:24 pm]