It's been a rough almost three weeks this rotation due to the death of my dear colleague Billy on the first day of him coming back on shift. He died of a heart attack despite the medical team's best efforts to resuscitate him. I was one of the last in the group to know and hence I didn't have much time to come to terms with it. So when it was mentioned in the morning shift change meeting, I just started sobbing and had to leave the room to calm myself down. For the rest of that day, I simply wasn't myself and was tearing up intermittently although distracting myself with work did help a bit. I wanted to remember him the way he was, always cheerful in life, and so I didn't go with the rest to view his body at the clinic. It was a truly sad time for the entire production team as we continue to struggle to cope with this sudden loss just three days ago. RIP Billy.
We spend half of our time with our colleagues in this FIFO arrangement and so they are just like our second family. However, I honestly didn't expect my emotions to run that strong. My boss said that's because I push myself so hard at work that such things affect me even more when I allow myself to slow down and grieve. I attended the funeral service last night and was at the airport this morning to see him off as his casket was repatriated back home. To make matters more grim, a contractor (I don't know him) collapsed the day before yesterday while working in front of my office and died on his way to the hospital! This is yet another reminder for me and all of us to treasure our loved ones and our health because nothing else really matters at the end of the day.
On the work front, I've been really busy frantically trying to bring our new Refinery online, which through my career history, is the worst project ever designed and managed. But that also means the issues I have to overcome every single hour of every single day would be good learning and training for future challenges. The break in the commissioning came on the day of Billy's death when we managed to finally draw our first product samples. He was blessing us from beyond for sure...
It's also time for this month's musical sharing, which is my cover of a song that I really like. It's "I'm Already There" from Lonestar, a number that always gets me emotional when I perform it. If you're missing your loved ones tonight, no matter where they are, living or not, as long as they are in your hearts, they are already there with you. See you all in a few weeks.
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