A few days ago I was at work and saw a person whose face looked familiar to one of my old colleague. He reminded me of Rajan, my ex-colleague in one of the companies I worked for. I met him on the very first day I started working in that company. He took me to the cafeteria. As a courtesy, he paid for my breakfast. We started talking about his overall experience, my experience, my background, my family, and many other things. He was a nice guy.
Then it happened that we worked together on the same teams, the same projects, different teams, reporting to the same manager. I learned a lot about him later. His wife could not conceive because of some health problems. I often noticed that he looked worried. We never talked about these things openly. But you could see it on his face.
Photo on Unsplash by Eric Ward
Time passed. After two years, someone told me that his wife was pregnant. This was just before the beginning of COVID. Then COVID came and we all went into remote mode. I moved to some other teams. We rarely connected.
When the second wave of COVID came, it was sometime in April-May 2021. There was an atmosphere of fear and panic. The second wave was much more dangerous than the first. There were reports of a lot of casualties. The impact was more and more widespread this time around. Then, one day, I saw a message in one of our WhatsApp groups. It was a very disturbing and shocking message. I could not believe it at all. It said: that Rajan had passed away the night before. He was infected with COVID-19. He was hospitalized for a few days, but he did not survive. His son was barely a year old.
For the whole family, it was certainly devastating news. I had no idea how difficult it must have been for his wife to come to terms with the reality of the situation and the fate of her little boy. I later learned that some of his friends were collecting donations and trying to help his family. But the vacuum could never be a substitute.
I remember the first day in this office when we met and had breakfast together. Life is so unpredictable and especially after COVID-19 it looks like nature wanted us to teach a lesson that realizes the value of relations and people. You never know whether you will see tomorrow’s sunrise or not. So be good, do good.