So close... it's surreal

Around noon... one of my managers pinged me saying one of my employees hasn't reported into work and we can't reach him.  How do we do a wellness check.  It was the same employee that got trapped during the storm and had to evacuate to a hotel.  I told him to call the hotel and check up on him.  Simple enough.

10 minutes later... he pings me. "Emergency.  Need to talk."

He calls me on my cell and says, "Uh.... Jim passed away." 

I couldn't believe what I was hearing.  So I called the County Sheriff's Coroner's office and sure enough... "We have Jim." 

So surreal.  Last week... we had lunch with him.  We were laughing.  Joking.  Talking about life.  And now... there's no life to talk about. 

What made it worse was... when I told HR and asked for guidance.. I got slapped in the face, not once but twice, for not notifying them right away.  Sorry - I did what I thought was right in notifying their next of kin.  Redo this 100 times and I'll do the same thing 100 times over. HR never once thought about what I was going through.  I just lost a colleague.  I lost a friend. 

The rest of the day was surreal.  I needed to process this and I couldn't.  Had one meeting that allowed me to take my mind off of things for an hour.  Then headed to practice and I was able to distract myself for a bit.  But when I got home... my mind was completely consumed.

Kids knew I was off.  I was not normal.  I was still in shock.  Was stunned. 

Then mom... of all people... picked the absolute wrong night and wrong time to call for simple tech support and whine.  I couldn't take it.  The straw broke my back... and I snapped. Any other night... any other night...

This comes on the tail end of SW crying at church... 

I'm a mess right now.  I can't take this.  Can't bear this.  

Jesus... can you take my burdens?