Change

I slid the key into the lock, opened the door and heard the familiar beep of the security system. I punched my code into the pad and flipped on the lights. This routine, performed a thousand times seemed precarious after a month away...would I remember my code? If my buddies had any imagination they would have rigged up some trip wire or something to confuse me, or coated my office door knob with Vaseline. But I work with a group of hopeless adults, a buttoned up bunch of professionals who wouldn’t know a decent gag if it smacked them in the face.

The place had the familiar smell of leather, industrial carpet and copy paper. Somebody should distill it into a cologne. They could call it...White Collar. 

I stopped in the hallway and looked around at the place. Nothing had changed and everything had changed. I saw the fresh vacuum lines. The cleaning people come over the weekend. I saw the coffee mugs in the dish drain, the overflow of documents to be destroyed in a box on top of the full shredder. I stuck my head in the conference room and noticed that the candy jar was full of chocolates. The placemats on the glass top table—a redundancy that I have never understood—were laid out perfectly, the chairs snug against the edge of the table. My office was immaculate, a month’s worth of correspondence stacked neatly on the desk, already culled of junk mail. I had 38 missed calls, but they had already been prioritized for me by my rock star assistant. It was as if I had never left. 

After getting myself acclimated to my surroundings, with the beginnings of a plan for the day taking shape, I distributed the gifts I had purchased, placing them on the desks of their recipients. That’s when I noticed the empty office. I say empty, when it wasn’t really—the desk was still there—but everything else was gone. It startled me, even though I had been informed of his departure while in Maine. A friend and colleague of the past 35 years had decided to move his operation to an office he had built in his home. He, like me, is at the point where his work schedule isn’t as jammed packed as it was twenty years ago. His success has afforded him time to travel and the luxury of a slower pace. Why not save a little on overhead?

Still, I stood at the entrance to his office and felt a tugging of emotion in my heart, the sadness I always feel at the end of a thing. There is a part of me that wishes things didn’t have to change, although without change, life would be a colossal bore. Practically every work day for 35 years I have carried on a trash-talking discourse with my friend about his pathetic Redskins, his misplaced devotion to tar heel basketball. He has given me unending grief about the Red Sox, ribbed me about anything he could think of that might get a rise out of me. But, it hasn’t all been insults and trash talk. We’ve commiserated over family setbacks, health problems, the frustrations and aggravations of our business. 

How many people have I had a 35 year relationship with in this life? Not all that many. Fewer still who I have interacted with on a daily basis. And while it’s not like he has moved to Siberia—his house is right around the corner from mine practically—it will be different. Change. The constant reshuffling of the people and things of our lives, the shifting sands of events and relationships...change is the only constant.

Doesn’t mean I have to like it.