The client put his hands behind his head and kicked up his feet, the way only a true asshole would do.
“You can’t get this done in a week?” he said. “What’s the deal? It’s just programming.”
On our respective ends of the Zoom call, Evan and I covered our faces to mask frustration. We’d been going round and round with this guy for weeks, and our patience wore thin.
“Here,” the client said. “Let me show you.”
He pulled out a dry-erase marker and started whiteboarding a design that was more Jackson Pollock painting than actual architecture.
I opened a private chat with Evan and started a profanity-laced takedown of our client and all that he stood for. But Evan beat me to the punch with an animated GIF of Mr. Burns from The Simpsons: his eyebrows raised, his fingers steepled.
“Excellent,” Mr Burns said.
I deleted my text and instead shared a GIF of my own: Homer Simpson this time, slowly disappearing into his backyard hedge. We both went off camera, laughing, as our client finished.
“See?” he said, then punched the sky with both arms. “AMAZING!”
We ended the video call, and Evan dialed me almost immediately.
“Can you believe this guy?” he said.
“I know, right? ‘Let me show you,’” I mocked.
“It was truly beautiful architecture,” Evan said. “It was…”
“Amazing!” we both said, throwing our arms in the air.
Evan and I had recently begun working as lead engineers for a data consulting firm out of New England. We started on the same day, and I knew we’d be friends when, halfway through the HR-approved, sexual harassment training, Evan turned to me and said, “So, wait. I’m NOT supposed to sleep with the boss to get a promotion?”
“I guess not,” I said.
“This might be a problem for me.”
“You’ll be alright as long as you don’t wear stilettos and fishnet stockings to the office … Again.”
“Aww man. Now, I gotta buy a whole new wardrobe.”
We worked together for almost two years, and in that time we made a regular habit of interrupting each other’s otherwise prosaic workday.
He’d call me first thing in the morning and ask something like … “Did you know wombats are the only animals in the world that poop cube-shaped poop?” and we’d be off to the races.
“No,” I’d respond, “But did you know sharks have been around for 400 million years. That’s before Saturn had rings. That’s before trees!”
“Did you know the point on earth that’s the farthest from the center of the earth is not Mount Everest?”
“Weird,” I’d say. “Where is it?”
“Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador.”
“Oh … I want to go there so I can be taller than everyone else in the world.”
“You can be taller than everyone else right now. Just change your definition of ‘human’ to be anyone who is shorter than you.
“That seems lazy.”
“Better than flying to Ecuador.”
Evan was a devout Jew. He had memorized most of what I, as a Christian, would call The Old Testament. He just called it “The Bible.”
“Your people tacked on a whole extra book,” he said. “Totally unnecessary.”
“Ours is the Cliff’s Notes version. A bit less poetry and a bit more explain-y”
I toyed with the idea of pursuing a Master’s Degree in Theology once, and even started taking a few free online classes from Yale.
“I had no problems getting accepted for ‘free’ and ‘online’” I joked.
“You could probably get in if you applied,” he said. “It’s only Yale.”
As a graduate of Columbia, he had a raucous disdain for what he called “The Lesser Ivys.” He was helping me figure out Hebrew, and took great joy in lambasting their scriptural translations.
“See? It says Almah right here in Isaiah. Almah means ‘young woman’ not “virgin.’ You Christians always mistranslate things.”
“’Virgin’ was a pre-Christian Hebrew translation into Greek,” I said. “If it’s wrong, it’s y’all who got it wrong.”
He made a face.
“This is why your people hate my people.”
“My people don’t hate your people.”
“I’m Jewish,” he said. “EVERYONE hates my people.”
“AMAZING!” we both said, laughing.
You spend that much time talking to someone, eventually the conversation evolves. We talked about our families, our kids, what life was like where we grew up. Evan was one of the first people I told that I was trying to get approved for weight loss surgery.
“That sounds drastic,” he said.
“Yeah, it is. But I’m afraid if I don’t, I won’t be around to see my kids grow up.”
“Yeah,” he said. “That makes it a good thing.”
Evan shared that he’s struggled with depression most of his life.
“Some days are good. Some days are bad. And some days, Mr Dry-Erase Marker starts drawing on a whiteboard and I seriously reconsider my commitment to being alive.”
He paused, hesitant.
“I actually tried …once,” he said. Then, with a slight laugh, he added: “It didn’t take.”
“I’m glad it didn’t,” I said.
Mid 2023, we started noticing cracks in our company’s economic outlook. Projects slowed. Fewer and fewer clients on-boarded. Our daily zoom conversations shifted again.
“I’m updating my resume,” I said. “It can’t hurt to look.”
“They can’t get rid of us,” Evan said. “We’re running two of the largest clients.”
“I don’t know, man. I don’t know.”
Then, the bottom fell out. Client development ceased entirely. I started interviewing, but Evan kept saying things would be fine. I found a new job just after Thanksgiving. The same day I turned in my notice, they laid off my entire team, including Evan.
He called me, pissed.
“Those fuckers tried to say it was MY FAULT. Like I wasn’t working hard enough. Can you believe that?”
“That’s amazing,” I said.
“Yeah … yeah, it is.”
Over the next few months, I’d pass him any job posting I could, and even introduced him to some friends who were hiring, but nothing came of it. The job market, then, was brutal for people in technology. Still is.
He got a job with a packaging company, but they laid him again off after only a few weeks. He got another, this time with a large bank, but they rescinded the offer two days before he was supposed to start.
“We have decided to go in another direction,” the form letter said. Amazing.
Meanwhile, his life and his marriage were falling apart. He’d call me late at night, exasperated.
“She keeps telling me I need to get a job. That I’m not really a MAN if I don’t.I FUCKING KNOW, ALRIGHT! It’s not like I’m not trying. I can’t just MAKE them hire me!”
“I know, dude.”
“I can’t do this anymore.”
“Evan?” I said. “Where’s your mind at? You sound … off.”
He didn’t say anything, so I continued. “Are you thinking of suicide again?”
“… No.”
“Evan.”
“Sometimes.”
We sat silent for a moment.
“On my way into work,” I began, “there’s this rise in the hill as you come west across hwy 50 toward the Florida Turnpike. I leave real early – mostly to avoid all the traffic – so it’s still dark out most days. Until I get to that hill. I come over the hill and BOOM, the horizon all the way to downtown Orlando with the sun burning the sky in oranges and ambers. The most beautiful sunrise you’ve ever seen.”
“That’s Amazing,” he said.
“Yeah … Yeah, it is.”
“Why did you tell me that?”
“I don’t know, man. I see that sunrise every morning. Some mornings, it’s the only good thing I see. But it’s always there.”
“I guess,” he said.
“You need to see your therapist, man. Call her right when we’re done. No questions.”
“Okay. “
“One more thing. Promise me, the next time you feel this way, promise me you’ll call me before you do anything. I don’t care what day or time it is.”
“I promise,” he said.
Evan and his wife got a divorce several months later. They tried, but they just couldn’t hang on. He moved in with his dad, kept looking for a job, and struggled being content with seeing his kids primarily through facetime calls and the occasional weekend visit.
There were several long nights, or every early morning, when he’d call me. We didn’t say much. Usually just a few minutes. He was keeping his promise
He checked himself into the hospital for a few months, and it was here that things started getting better. He had therapists, a group of people he could talk to. He came clean about his alcohol addiction and started getting help.
On our first call, when he got out, he showed me his pin.
“I’m fifty five days sober,” he said, smiling.
“That’s Amaizing, man. I’m really proud of you.”
“I get another one at a hundred. I keep this up, I’ll have my shirts all covered in flair. I could go be a server at TGI Fridays!”
“People still go to Fridays?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t been in years.”
“Me, neither.”
He continued to struggle with jobs but eventually found something that seemed to stick. A small software company. Nothing fancy. A job is a job. Our conversations turned from the way things had been to what he hoped would come next. He was learning Japanese. He hoped to move there, one day, and start over. He was dating again, too.
“I had three dates last weekend!”
“Same woman?”
“No! Three DIFFERENT women! Amazing, right?”
“It’s kinda weird. But, hey … you do you.”
One day, he sent me a text. It was a picture of the sunrise through the front window of his new place in New Jersey.
“Doesn’t have quite the panache of a Florida sunrise,” I thought. “But it’ll do.” I smiled.
A few months later, Evan was laid off again. He let me know he was struggling, but hadn’t started drinking. He said his wife was being difficult, making it hard to see his kids. He said he was really having a hard time.
We’d been here before. But lately, things seemed to be looking up, so I didn’t think much of it. I was on vacation with my family. The kids were fighting over who got to sit in the front seat of the next roller coaster, and I was keeping the peace when Evan’s text came through.
I sent him a quick reply: “Keep trying, man. You can make it. We’ll chat when I get back.”
The vacation ended, and life was chaos for me. My son finished up his Eagle Scout project, which basically means I finished up his Eagle Scout project. We had just started an exciting new project at work that had me working late at night and into the morning sometimes. Three weeks passed before I realized I hadn’t heard from him.
“Dude … how are things?” I texted. No response.
The project at work went into full swing. The school year started. My youngest son, Breccan, had try-outs for Fall baseball. My oldest son, Eliott, started his senior year, wading through college applications and end-of-high-school rituals.
I had just dropped the kids off for Wednesday night church when a guy blew through a red light almost clipping my front bumper. I honked. He flipped me off as he sped away.
“Amazing!” I said. And then I felt something … in the pit of my stomach. I hadn’t thought of or heard from Evan in weeks. I tried calling him. No answer. I texted. Nothing.
I pulled into a Publix lot and parked. “Maybe he’s in the hospital again,” I thought. Then, I Googled: “Evan D.. Oakhurst, NJ. Obituary.”
There it was. A single post from his synagogue noting his passing. He was survived by his brother, his father, his ex-wife, and three kids.Afterward, was a prayer for the deceased.
I sat in the parking lot, listening to the sounds of traffic speed past. I read the obituary twice, not wanting to believe it. He had been gone a month. The date listed was the day after he’d texted me. I hadn’t even noticed.
Life goes on when someone dies. That’s the strangest thing. I still had to pick my kids up from church. I still had to go to work. Baseball games and college applications still happened. I couldn’t stop thinking about his kids. His faith community. His ex-wife who, I’m sure, still loved him, despite what happened.
There was a numbness, followed by anger. He promised he’d call me first. How dare he do this. After that, came the guilt. He kept his promise. I wasn’t there. I wish I’d called him that last time. I don’t know if it would have made any difference. I just wish I had called him.
I keep thinking about the way we sometimes say people lose their battle with depression. Maybe that’s true. I don’t know. But I knew Evan on the days he won. There were a lot of those days, and I don’t think his last bad day gets to cancel the good ones. .
It rained for me the next few days. The drive into work was dark and gloomy. Then, one morning, I made my way west across highway 50 in the clear grey of an early Florida morning. I hit the rise in the hill, came over the ridge, and the sun poured out over the horizon, spilling gold across the quiet earth. The darkness gave way without a sound, and I could see that the world was beautiful again, that it had been beautiful all along.
I drove west, toward the turnpike, taking it all in.