He and I were not that close. I didn’t particularly like him but I didn’t particularly dislike him either. But both of us being consultants reporting to the same manager, he as a mainframe admin and I as a Unix admin, our desks were usually close together, two desks over at the most. I’ve been working here for eleven years and I spent several hours a day everyday within twenty feet of each other for eleven years whether we enjoyed each other’s company or not.

Eleven years is a long time. Some days we joked around – he especially liked to squeeze in the words “viagra” and “KY gel” somewhere. Some days we had nothing to say to each other than greetings. Some days we argued the mainframe or the Unix server was to blame for printing problem – I was usually right. Some days we talked about current events. Some days we showed each other the pictures of pets and talked about them. He didn’t know how many cats he had. Some days we had screaming matches, in one of which the sentences like “Fuck you” and “Go fuck yourself” flew at each other, and as a consequence, we ignored each other for months afterward. Some days he tried to convince me that I should incorporate myself as a nonprofit organization to deduct expense for my dogs. Some days he tried to sell me vitamins. Some days he tried to convince me I should get an expensive hobby and get a tax deduction. Some days he tried to convince me I should get cash for my clunker. Some days he tried to convince me that I should stop eating red meat and more veggies. Yeah, he usually tried to convince me, come to think of it. Not very successfully, I might add.

Several months ago, he tried to get rid of his pennies by leaving them out on top of a long  file cabinet next to his desk. He thought some people would take them. To his dismay, people started leaving their own unwanted pennies there and the number of pennies quickly grew. With so many pennies, some people started creating “penny art,” making images of things or just some abstract patterns with those pennies. Of course some others enjoyed destroying the “art.” He couldn’t understand why nobody wanted to take those pennies even after I repeatedly asked him why didn’t HE?

When I came back to work this Monday after a week’s absence, I was told he had been in ICU for 10 days already. He had called in sick the entire week before the week I missed work, so I hadn’t seen him for two weeks. I was told that he had initially gone to the hospital for throwing up blood and it turned out he had been bleeding internally. It had something to do with his liver, and he had liver cancer removed a few years ago – it must have been around the time we were ignoring each other because I had no idea he had liver cancer until two days ago. The doctors at the hospital wanted to transfer him to another hospital for liver transplant but before they could do that, his condition worsened.

He was a friendly enough person. With all his eccentricities and idiosyncracies, after more than twenty years of working at the same place, a lot of people at work maintained a love-hate relationship with him and he had become like an endearing family member. Some people  went to the hospital to visit. I had planned to visit him with two other coworkers today during lunch, even though he was not conscious, because we were told that he didn’t have much time left. His kidney was shutting down.

On top of his desk next to a bunch of scattered pennies, now sits a small leafy plant with a yellow ribbon with a card saying “In loving memory of Ben.” He died around eight o’clock this morning at the young age of sixty-five.

Rest in peace, Ben.