Saying good-bye to my mentor / co-worker

My co-worker just retired on Friday.  This is someone I’ve seen almost every day for the past 8 years – not many people in my life I can say that about!  (My partner, and others at work, basically.)  I will miss him a lot.  Some people have a lot of co-workers.  I really only have just one.  I have one supervisor, one co-worker, and one other person on the cleaning staff who is only there for 4 hrs a day (more of a higher turnover.  A co-worker, but it doesn’t feel the same).

We didn’t actually work “together,” but we worked the same hours and we were still a team.  I clean the first floor, and he cleaned the second floor.  We probably only saw each other for a total of a half-hour every day.  Still, I felt very connected with him.  We commiserated together.  We listened to each other.  If I needed anything, I knew I could go to him.  I knew if I helped him out with something, I was being highly appreciated for it.

I’d have to say he taught me more than any other person, in my journey to becoming a janitor who is very good at his job.  He always had an opinion about how things should be done.  And he had a lot of tricks-of-the-trade up his sleeve.  He always wanted to pass those on to me (and anyone else who had the patience to learn from him – most didn’t).  He was really difficult to understand.  He’s from the Caribbean and has a super thick accent.  He also has a speech impediment (I believe) on top of that.  Over time, I began to be able to understand every word out of his mouth.  Most people – teachers and other people in the building – could really understand roughly half or less of the things he was saying.  Even after interacting with him every day for years and years and years.  Sometimes I felt the urge to be his interpreter, but I think he might have felt insulted, so I really only did this if it really seemed necessary.

One of my favorite word-disconnects he uttered, was anytime he was talking about someone with Alzheimer’s, it would come out sounding like “Old Timers.”  How great is that?  I’ve pretty much started using that in my own lexicon.  There are plenty of other neologisms and intonations I’ve adopted from him.  Just one way I will always remember him.

There was a party for him after school in the library (this is the first “library party” I’ve attended – usually I haven’t felt like I was welcome / I haven’t gone).  We ate cheese squares and broccoli & cauliflower.  We drank Pepsi and had sheet cake.  He made a brief speech and he cried.  I was touched.  He was presented with a few gifts, including a scrap book the Social Committee made for him.  I contributed two pieces for it.  This is what I wrote:

I think that he saw me as male.  Or at least as not female.  He always referred to me as “Man,” or, more like, “Mon” (the Caribbean thing).  He was old-school in a lot of ways, but he never once tried to do something for me (unless he was showing me a better way to do it) or told me I couldn’t do something / lift something.   I always appreciated that.  There’s no way I’ll ever forget him.  He impacted my life in ways he may never know…