Member-only story
Your name was Devin
Your name was Devin (not your real name).
You loved your partner, and he loved you back.
You were highly-respected and much-adored in your job as Staff Writer at the ___________________________, a Canadian Crown corporation. When you died, you were surrounded by friends and family. Your workplace vowed to host a life celebration here in Ottawa — time, date, and location TBA. Mourners at your funeral were encouraged to make donations in your memory to the Coronary Care Unit where you had breathed your last.
You were remembered as having a quick sense of humor, and had been known to cite Shakespeare in that regard: “Brevity is the soul of wit”.
This is the extent of my knowledge of your life, as I was never fortunate enough to have known you while you were alive. I’m the guy who replaced you in your job, about four or five months after you died. At the time, my contact at the recruitment agency had told me that I was replacing you and that it had taken a while for your colleagues to entertain the idea of seeing anyone other than you sitting at what had been your desk.
The last bit of business to take care of before I started was to sign my employment contract. And there it was, the clause that has haunted me to this day, approximated below from memory:
I acknowledge that this position…
