The Longest Day of the Year

June 21st, the first day of summer. On June 20th, a coworker, Wade, died in a motorcycle accident. I found out the next day, along with everyone else. We were all crowded into a meeting area, trying to guess why we'd been called to meet so suddenly, and why the tone was so somber.

Personally, I assumed the company had gone bankrupt and wondered how it had happened so fast. Funny that, in casting my mind around for ideas of what bad things could have happened, I couldn't really come up with anything. Or not really funny, maybe lucky is a better word.

Wade was already with Veer when I started two years. Even with the crowd of nutcases that made up Veer at that time, he still managed to stick out as a unique personality. And a loud one - never much for quiet diplomacy. In some ways, he fit the stereotype of the IT Guy. He didn't hesitate to let me know when I did something stupid. Which was pretty often.

I didn't understand all of what he did, but the people who did were frequently in awe. There were a couple emergency all-nighters, saving the servers from melty oblivion.

I never really thought about it before, but Wade was a big part of my image of Veer, and one of the people that made me believe things would never go too far off track. There are a few - people in whose integrity and intelligence I trust and use as my barometers. If they're unhappy, I'm worried, but as long as they stick around I figure everything is okay. It's hard to lose a person like that.

Wade also became one of my favourite people at Veer by inadvertently reminding me of my husband. Both of them are always right. Both of them are always right even when they have no idea what the hell they're talking about. Both of them actually are right so often that you can't really even make fun of them for thinking they're always right.

And, like my husband, Wade was a great afficinado of arguing. An orator, really. If you weren't rock solid in your position, you were just asking to get creamed. Thing is, once you came around to his way of thinking, he could switch from angry to laidback and friendly in a second. For a grudge-holder like me, it was an amazing thing to behold.

But that was just work. He was also a hardcore mountain biker, hauling himself up mountains just to throw himself down the side at top speed. Motorcyclist. Got married on the beach in Mexico. And these were just the things I know...

I miss him and will miss him, and feel for all his friends and family that knew him so much more...there's nothing I could say that would ever be adequate