Life, death, and retirement | Random ASCII – tech blog of Bruce Dawson

submited by

Style Pass

2024-10-01 21:30:03

My last technical blog post was October 1st of last year. After I hit publish on that one I went to get ready for bed and found my wife lying on the bathroom floor in excruciating pain.

I took her to the hospital. She was diagnosed with pancreatitis which is a truly horrible disease. Her hospital stay was an insane rollercoaster and she ultimately died nine weeks later.

After she died there were a lot of bureaucratic tasks to be done – at least doubled because of our dual US/Canada citizenships. Google gave me a month of leave and I took a month of vacation and I came back… not at all better. Grief is a long process, complicated by the fact that I’d only fairly recently moved back to Vancouver – I had practically zero close friends nearby.

As I tried to piece together a new life I found that work – especially remote work, isolated in my home office – was not a useful part of the healing process.