Endings We Must Process

I originally wrote this in March 2023 or so, but it remains relevant.

My wife’s grandfather died on Sunday morning. He was 89. It seemed like he hadn’t been doing super great for a month or so, so it wasn’t entirely unexpected, but it’s obvious sad. She was coming back from a bachelorette north of Houston when she found out. I was staring at a 48 Hours episode I’d already seen. Since I’ve been in her life, two of the other grandparents had passed away; I entered that relationship with no biological living grandparents, although my step-grandmother (the only one I’ve really known) is alive and kicking somewhere in South Florida. I cannot say I speak to her even annually, however.

I do find the concepts of “endings” interesting, with death being the most finite ending of them all. Death seems to intrigue people in part because, even if we’re super faithful and devout, we honestly have no idea what’s gonna happen on the other side of all that. You can get really complicated with endings too, because you can bring in issues around foregiveness and recividism and who deserves redemption and emotional angst and trauma and lots of other related, and highly-emotional, topics. It’s not an easy place to skate.

Years ago, I wrote something about the power of endings at work.

I found this topic particularly interesting because so many workplaces are go go go next shiny thing next shiny thing, and there are very rarely chances to process the ending of one thing before you pivot to another — and that often includes switching jobs, where the new place that hired you usually wants you to start on the Monday following your exit from the last place. There’s a lot of “go” and not much “reflection” in modern work. And while I do like a good “post-mortem” on a project, I also understand that companies who have lots of post-mortems are viewed negatively — like they’re running a guitar circle and not an enterprise SaaS. How you are perceived does matter.

On the other end of the continuum, I’ve been divorced, which is a pretty sizable ending in its own right.