06.12.08
Farewell, Mr. Hooper
While resting from Thursday’s 25-hour laser marathon, I spent the weekend doing some catchup on reading, cooking, and cleaning: I made truffles, and pancakes, and a carrot cake for a friend whose birthday was Saturday.
It was a bit warm, but overall pleasant, and I got some needed rest.
I say it this way, because what followed next makes almost no sense in that- or any- context. At some point in the evening, I turned on the computer to check email- and learned that sometime over the weekend, a coworker from my lab’s California contingent had passed away in his sleep. We’re not sure why, and although this is hardly the first (or fourth) acquaintance my age to pass away since I began grad school, it’s perhaps the most inexplicable. Far from being a party animal, he was one of the most soft-spoken people I’ve ever met: I once spent ten minutes coaxing him to admit his guilty secret, which turned out to involve watching HBO series on DVD during the weekends (instead of working).
His roommate is also from our lab, as they’d recently moved out there when the advisor did. We’re not sure what happened, but it’s hard- both to find words to fit this situation, and to do anything tangible from such a distance. We’ll have to see what happens from here.