TO-WIT: THE FIRST GOODBYE
She came into my office and sat down in the chair that faces my desk, same as she has done tens of thousands of times before. This time though, she carried no mail, no notepad, no files. She said nothing at first, but she didn’t need to.
So many years together create significant prescience in such matters. I knew what she had to say and I had little desire to hear it.
“Its time,” she finally managed to utter.
“When,” I answered back.
“Soon.”
I nodded in acknowledgment but said nothing else. I mean, what else is there to say to a secretary dead set on abandoning me after thirty five years together? “Sonofabitch” came to mind but traveled no further. Instead we just looked at each other for a few moments, trying to smile. Then she got up and went back to her desk.
Pat - her name is Pat – has been discussing retirement for some time now. Though the conversations always upset me, I’ve coped with them, provided you regard the jamming of one’s fingers into one’s ears while humming “na na na na na” as coping. Now stunned, I just sat there at my desk, trying to face a reality that all the foreknowledge in the world could never have prepared me for.
From the moment I first hired her I knew how lucky I was. Smart, efficient, talented and brutally loyal, she has always done everything with consummate professional skill and care. No one asks for a raise with greater tact than she does, and no one accepts “no” with greater aplomb.
If I had to recall just one incident which demonstrates her worth, it would be the afternoon, long before the advent of word processors, that I returned to the office after lunch and first read her tickler note reminding me that I had an appellate court brief due that every day. “What,” I screamed amiably.
“You ignored all the earlier reminders,” she replied unfazed, and even though my own faze had just darted off to hell in a hand basket, we wrote, printed, bound and mailed off that brief and reproduced record before the five p.m. postmark deadline. That we were able to accomplish this Herculean feat was due mostly to her superior secretarial skills, not the least of which was her uncanny ability to set back the timestamp on the postage meter. That kind of talent is priceless – and timeless.
She manages my calendar, bills my clients, pays both my professional and personal bills, gets my coffee, takes my dogs to the vet, never complains, and has been the inspiration for more of my literary forays into the world of lawyering than anyone else. She has covered my behind more times than my mother, making me look far less soiled in the process. She knows all of my dirty, little secrets, and trust me on this one, they are far safer with her than they are with me.
Friends like this don’t come along often. She cannot be replaced, not now, not next month, not next year, not ever, and I will miss her sorely.
And of course there’s another almost unbearable poignancy to all of this. We’ve worked together more than half our lives, and together we’ve gotten both old and wizened. I know all too well that with her departure mine cannot be far behind.
For now though I must learn to wend my way through the unremitting chaos of a law practice without her. In truth though, I am only moderately terrified. Come what may, I still have her phone number and I know where she lives.
©2012, S. Sponte, Esq.