“As much as you wanted the Enterprise, I want this.”
Captain Decker, Star Trek: The Motion Picture
I already knew that dealing with my friend Bryant’s retirement was going to be difficult; I’d barely adjusting to even thinking about it when my other friend snuck into my office one morning and closed the door behind her. While that’s never a good sign under normal circumstances — and perhaps owing to my heightened sensitivities on the subject — I almost immediately knew what the excited smile on her face meant. Then and there I finally understood the full meaning of the phrase, gut punch, for I truly felt as though I’d been hit by a prize fighter several times my weight.
Karen and I go back to our shared time at Career Services, a magical place for most of the decade I was part of that organization. She joined the department the same year as our longtime director retired (seeing a trend here?) and found herself weathering some rather significant organizational changes as a result — one of which landed her on my team. Karen quickly took to her role, assisting students and employers as they navigated our various systems; she also took a starring turn in one of our (extremely) low-budget promotional videos that was a thinly veiled spoof of Law and Order. She was a joy to work with, so, naturally, when I left Career and moved across the street to my old gig at the business college I began to lobby for her to join me there. It took far longer than I’d hoped for the right position to come along, but when it did, she jumped and never looked back.
I don’t quite remember when I discovered Karen had been part of the original crew opening Disney Stores across the United States back in the 1980s, or that she had helped launch the short-lived Mickey’s Kitchen. Her stories about working for The Mouse House were endlessly fascinating, and her love for the company was still vibrant decades after she’d left them. Having had the privilege of working with her myself, I know she would’ve been an incredibly decorated district manager for The Disney Store had they not been ruined by a series of dubious decisions by the company, not the least of which was selling the chain off to a non-Disney retailer.
Karen had long been the voice of calm reason in my orbit; the stranger the situation, the more she worked to keep everyone on the level with a well-timed batch of freshly made cookies. Keeping things moving in I.T., even in a department as small as hours, requires a diligence and a level of organization few possess; she had both in spades, and managed in her time with us to clean up an operation that had grown rather long in the tooth. On top of that, she had killer skills when it came to data; routing out incorrect information was her superpower, one that came in especially handy during the final project she worked on for me.
So her gentle announcement that she, too, would be retiring this spring hit me a little hard. Coming on the heels of my friend, Bryant, making his own decision final, I felt a little bit like the world had taken a strange left turn without warning — and I’d not properly fastened my seatbelt. I couldn’t blame her, though; her husband had retired from the County the prior fall, and with that, the urge to continue on their quest to explore every National Park was simply to great to ignore any longer.
I probably shouldn’t admit this — and I’ve never actually told Karen — but the character of Raphael Gonzales was inspired by her love of the National Park system. The stories she’s told me over the years about friends of hers who have worked in the system led me to some digging, which in turn generated the idea of a National Park Police Officer keeping an eye on the treasures of our country. Up to now Raphe has been pretty much a secondary character, but I do hope to have him someday appear in his own book. Maybe that would be a fitting tribute to my friend in honor of her retirement; I’ll have to reach out and see what she thinks.
As I write this, it’s been nearly two months now since Karen retired, not that I’m keeping track. The office has somewhat settled into the new normal, but it’s extremely hard for me to see someone else in Karen’s office — even if they happen to be from my own team. I truly miss seeing her everyday, and especially on those fabulous Mondays when the leftovers from her weekend cookie experiments would appear for consumption. Chatting with her each week has been a wonderful touchstone, but I can’t get used to her now being one of the “formers” that join us on a weekly coffee zoom call. I’m feeling severely outnumbered in that department. At the end of the day, I’m happy that she’s moved to her next act, and even happier that we’ve kept in close contact. Soldiering on without her council has been difficult, but grows easier with time.
Not having weekly cookies? Now that has been hard. 🙂