Category: Personal Stuff
Farewell to a Great Person
(Out of respect for the family and some privacy for myself I’m only using his last initial in this post.)
Yesterday at 2:30am my boss, Mr. W, passed away peacefully in his sleep after a months-long battle with leukemia. He had previously survived cancer both at the tender age of 13 and again in his 30s so this time around when he was told there was no cure he felt only gratitude for the time he had been granted.
Mr. W was the best kind of boss you could ever even hope for. He’s the kind of boss that had a secret candy stash and would always give you treats for no reason. Some days he’d rush uptown and order pizza for the entire staff for no particular reason. Or, some days when he and I were alone at the shop he’d sneak uptown and buy Coca-Cola for both of us, even though he wasn’t really supposed to have much sugar. In my four years at the lumberyard/hardware store/building company he owned I’ve only ever heard him get mad once and it was never toward an employee.
But he wasn’t only a good boss of course. He was a wonderful person. Mr. W was always there to listen to you if you had a problem and he’d be the first one to help if he heard you were having trouble. He donated so much to charity and was active in the community right up until the end. And he was one of the very few people I know that actually practiced the Golden Rule throughout his whole life.
I knew the end was coming soon and Mr. W had been suffering for quite a while. I’m glad that the doctors were able to keep his pain under control and that he passed away peacefully in his sleep. Still, when you have to say goodbye to such a great person you can’t help but feel sad.
So farewell, Mr. W. You’re sorely missed.
My Other Job
When I asked for suggestions for new post ideas/improvements to make in the new year, a couple readers suggested doing more personal posts. What makes me the reader I am today, my hobbies, interests, etc. Well, here is the first of a few!
I’ve alluded to a second job that I’ve taken on in part to finance my (hopeful) trip to Book Expo America 2015. This second job is actually building picnic tables*. 6′ and 8′ picnic tables, to be precise. I work for an independently owned store that’s a lumber yard, hardware store and building company all rolled into one awesome package. Unfortunately, we’ve had severe labour shortages (despite what people here in Canada say about there being ‘no jobs’) so we had to cut back on one thing the men in the yard would do all the time: make picnic tables.
It was quite a lucrative part of the business but it was time-consuming and now the few men in the lumber yard we do have are being put to better use. So who would fill the gap in the market? Three years after picnic table production ceased here I am, making picnic tables in my spare time. I won’t pretend to be a gifted wood-worker but picnic tables are ridiculously simple when you get into the rhythm of things. Having the right equipment and a more than generous staff discount on all lumber helps, I’ll admit. But most of it is sheer stubbornness (and math).
*For those of you that were wondering: Yes, the one pictured above is one I built, not some random picture of a picnic table.