Goodbye for now, Tom.

Grief is a strange beast.

It can come into your life in such completely unexpected ways. It catches our breath, turns our world upside down, and creates a swirl of uncertainty as we try to find a solid place to stand in the midst of upheaval.

In the last three weeks, I’ve been astonished to see so many of my friends and family experiencing the loss of people they love dearly. They find themselves staggering under the weight of the void now left in their world after their friend, parent, in-laws, uncle, aunt, child, coworker, or sibling has been ripped from their lives.

Covid. Cancer. ALS. Natural causes. Accidents. All grief-inducing events.

Tom – long-time co-worker, manager, Chief Engineer, partner in auditing and assessment projects, and friend – lost his life in a head-on collision two weeks ago today.

I process life by writing. I always have. I probably always will. Writing is my attempt to make sense of both the very hard things that life throws at each of us….and also the place in which I try to capture and cherish the beautiful. Tom’s tragic and sudden death – and his friendship and what he taught me, spans both those realms.

I’ve tried to put words to paper (or rather, hands to keyboard) at least three times since Tom’s death….to try to get the words and the thoughts out of my racing mind. I’ve sat down to type these little black lines and curves on white ‘paper’, in order to form words and sentences and paragraphs and explanations and reasons and sense and pithy platitudes and “lessons to learn” from these past two weeks of shock.

I’ve failed every single time. Until tonight.

I think the reason I am able to finally write tonight, is two-fold: On Friday, we gathered both in-person and via livestream to laugh and cry and celebrate Tom’s life, and then last night while watching the movie “News of the World” with Ken – my rock – to try to take our minds off of our sadness, I was struck by these words:

“To move forward, you must remember first.”

And so, this:

Remembering Tom Johnson

I’ve known Tom for the past 9 years or so. He was the Chief Engineer at Dynamic Systems, the company we both work for. My husband, Ken, has actually known him much longer than that – he knew Tom in the Government IT Contracting space for several years prior to either Ken or Tom joining Dynamic Systems.

Tom liked to research….to really learn something backwards and forwards. The guy was SMART. And yet, never once did I ever see him approach anything in a standard way, or from what most would consider to be a normal perspective.

No – Tom always came at everything from a different angle, and then asked those around him to do the same….to see it from his perspective. And often in doing so, a solution would finally be found to whatever technical, network, or security engineering issue was at stake in the moment.

I worked closely with Tom on several projects – including our company’s CMMI L-3 assessment and ISO 27001 certification. For the last year or so, I’ve been in the position of helping Tom as he led our CMMC L-3 audit preparation.

We’d talk nearly every work day – via meetings, phone calls, Skype. He taught me much……technically and practically. Rarely did a work day go back, that we didn’t communicate – discussing work tasks, plans, solutions but also just general life conversations.

My degree is in psychology/sociology and counseling. I am a book nerd, not a technology nerd. I am, however, a naturally curious person. I tend to ask a lot of questions. Never once did Tom not take the time to answer my questions. And never once did he make me feel unintelligent because of my simplistic, technically uneducated questions. He loved to teach.

Tom had a way of pulling you into his world through his passion for teaching. That’s my theory, anyway. His high intelligence, engineer mind, unique personality and huge love of God meant that Tom looked for ways to love others, and did that mostly by pulling people into his world one by one by one…..by sharing his theories, his theology, his teaching, and his way of doing things from creating Visio drawings to spreadsheets to documentation to data-flow diagrams to workflows to shelves to wiring to plumbing.

We didn’t always agree on the best way to tackle a project. Our work styles were very different, and at times, those differences created friction and frustration. That’s not so unusual when working closely with others, particularly in times of stress and pressing deadlines. But even in those moments, our frustrations never impacted our respect or friendship, or the ability to somehow find common ground and compromise, and ways to keep pressing forward to successful completion of the task at hand.

Tom loved to joke around. Pull pranks. Be ornery. One example that he roped me into was THE FUDGE PRANK. His wife Carole makes the best home-made fudge I have ever tasted. I LOVE this stuff. So much so, that they once mailed me an entire box of it – three different flavors. And not just me – everyone in our company looked forward to Tom bringing Carole’s fudge to our meetings.

And he LOVED that everyone loved the fudge. He got a big kick out of that. One day, as we left yet another meeting to wearily trudge to our rental cars, Tom told me to “Quick – get out the leftover fudge and eat the last two pieces!” At the same time, he called out across the parking lot to our Professional Services director and said, “Hey, do you want some fudge?” Of course, the director said, “Yes!!!!”. Tom replied back gleefully – “Too late – Shelly just at the last two pieces.” and pointed at me, as I gladly and guiltily joined in the prank and popped the last piece into my mouth with a grin.

Tom was definitely full of mischief.

I’m going to miss our friend.

I spent the better part of these two weeks both stunned and angry. I feel guilty for that anger, but I also know that is a normal response to grief. Talking to coworkers, we all are still shocked as well. It seems like Tom is just on PTO, and will be ‘back online’ tomorrow morning. Or the next day. Or the next.

And, I’ve been angry because sometimes, quite frankly, it is easier to be angry than it is to be sad.

But tonight, I am only sad. Sad that he will never say again to me with a hint of a grin in his voice, “You messed up the bullets again on this document.” Sad that he’ll never again miss a due date I had set, because he wasn’t much of a fan of schedules. Sad that he’ll never again send me a picture of his latest project – a vase, or a coffee tray, or a new game he’s built that he knows will be the hit at his church’s fall festival.

And yet, I am also grateful. For what he taught me. For his patience with my questions – “What does a hypervisor do? How do I learn computer networking? What’s the best way to approach this action item? Can you please review this brief?”

I’m grateful for his calm demeanor in stressful meetings – his ability to command a room, and what that taught me about presenting briefs professionally. And the power of commanding attention with a quiet voice, rather than one raised in tention or anger or frustration.

I’m grateful for the example he set for others in his love for his family, and his commitment to his church and love of God.

I’m grateful that he and Carole traveled here for our wedding, and read the scripture at the start of the ceremony.

And I am grateful to have had the honor of calling him friend.

As mentioned at the start of this remembering of Tom’s life, so many of my friends and family are in the throes of deep grief right now. And while I am grieving Tom’s death – as is my sweet Ken, and many of our dear friends and coworkers – Tom’s wife and children and family bears the heavier weight of grief that does not compare….as do other friends who are mourning the loss of a parent, sibling or spouse. I ache for all.

C.S. Lewis – my favorite author – accurately captures the experience of grief so vividly and honestly in his book, “A Grief Observed.” In fact – so transparently that at first printing, he published it under a pseudonym because he did not want to be recognized as the author – it was so raw. So painful.

And yet, so beautiful. Poignant. Helpful.

On those pages, are these words – which I’ve found many times to be, oh, so true, during the grieving days that we all experience in this life at one – or multiple – points in our journey:

“I thought I could describe a state; make a map of sorrow. Sorrow, hoever, turns out to be not a state but a process.” ~ C.S. Lewis; A Grief Observed

A process, indeed.

Goodbye, Tom. Until we meet again.