People Leaving

My mentor is moving away! The woman who looked over me for my two years of student placement. She laid the foundation of who I would be professionally, and now she's moving to a faraway land!

I actually knew this would be happening for a while now. She occupies a couple of positions I was hoping to muscle in on after she left. But apparently she decided to firm up a leaving date right after I became employed full time *eyetwitch*

It actually stings a bit more than I thought it would. It's too bad we won't have any professional overlap anymore.

I've got a neighbour who is terminally ill with cancer. She's this elderly woman who has been my next door neighbour since I moved into where I am. She's had cancer for as long as I've known her, but she's got the tough kind of personality that always made you think she was unbreakable and going to live forever. Did I mention on my blog that when I didn't have Internet when I first moved in, and was camping at the nearest Tim Horton's for their free WiFi, a neighbour gave me her WiFi address? Yeah, that was her. I also may have mentioned that I preferred this neighbourhood over my old even though my old one was more high-end, because in this one, people took an interest in you, even for completely mundane things. You could buy a jar of peanutbutter and someone would ask you what you had, and later that day, someone different would mention they heard you had peanutbutter. Likewhys, if you stepped out on your porch you could be sure to be roped into a conversation detailing the happenings of every household in the complex. My ailing friend had a lot to do with that.

I went to visit her in the hospital. I've never visited anyone in the hospital before. I thought there would be a bunch of rules and regulations, especially because she's being kept in isolation. I thought someone would have to confirm my association with her, or at least someone would ask if I had any infectious conditions, but they just told me to pop a gown over my clothing when I walked in.

I saw her but she didn't see me. She was asleep and I don't know what the etiquette is surrounding waking someone while they are in the hospital. I tried whispering her name, then I tried theatrically whispering her name, but it didn't work.

When I came back, I ran into her family. I told them I'd visited her, and they told me that she had been moved to a new location within an hour of when I left. Just kind of weird, I'd dropped by after working sixteen hours in a 24 hour timespan,  then had to drop off some forms at a location that put me in her neighbourhood. I was tired but told myself I wasn't too busy to visit her. If I'd put it off, I might never have seen her again, but if I'd planned better, she might have seen me.