Goodbye

Today I am filled with an overwhelming feeling of sadness.

Today at work, we cried.

Today, Steve passed away.
My heart aches for his family, whom I do not know. I am sure that he will be missed. I will miss him.

For the last month I have passed by his closed office door and looked at the placard there, VP Blood Services, and said a silent prayer for him. For his healing.

And, I expected him to come back.

For more than a year I know that Steve has battled one health problem after another. This winter he got pneumonia. From what I understand, if they hadn’t been checking up on him because of the pneumonia, they would have never found the tumor in his lungs.

I don’t know if we got off to the best start with Steve. He came right after we got a new medical director, so Steve came in on a flurry of change. Change that we weren’t sure we wanted. Everyone was happy with the old medical director, and the old way of doing things, you know, the way you do. And in comes new guy, with new people, and new ideas. Sometimes it’s a lot to take.

Steve came in to a tough position. He had to be the ‘Big Boss’, the pusher, the rock. He had to deal with the bottom line. He had to reprimand people, and he had to fire people. Last year he even had to lay me off. It’s not a day I will forget, and even though I was somewhat put out that they let me go – I always said they did treat me right when they let me go. Steve told me that my position had been eliminated, and he explained to me why. And once all the paperwork was signed he walked me out to my car. He shook my hand and looked at me and said that of all the people they’d had to let go of, he sure hoped I’d come back. He said that he was always relieved when he called and heard my voice, because he knew that I knew my job, and he would get a straight answer from me. He wanted to make sure that I was ok to drive myself home. And right before I left he told me that he was working on some new contracts, and hopefully he’d see me again.

When I came back to work Steve came over to welcome me back.

I’m sure going to miss him. I am going to miss him coming through on his way out for the day, and asking if we have enough platelets. And if we’d tell him no, he would go and make sure that we got what we needed. I will miss overhearing him talking about golf, and if you wanted time off sometimes he’d say “Well, are you going golfing?” and if you said no, then he’d say something like “Well, why do you need time off then?” I will miss going to meetings with Steve, and hearing his big ol’ belly laugh. And really, if you needed something, all you had to do was go and have a talk with Steve, and he’d get you what you needed to do your job. And if you had a problem, just go talk to Steve, and it would get fixed, even if you had to call him at home. And though Steve was no pushover, I know that he cared about his people.



And, we never got to say goodbye.