Sometimes when I go a long time without posting that I have so much to say I don’t know where to start.  So I don’t.  Then I don’t so more.  Then I think of one thing but feel like I need to give the post its proper respect and I am not sure I can do it because the event happened weeks ago.

Example.  My brother was laid off of his job of 22 years.  It happened on a Thursday a few weeks ago.  They escorted him home, took his blackberry, company truck, laptop and said that he could come back later and collect any personal effects in his office.  Twenty two years.  It was his first  job out of school.  He had never had a bad review and the firing came as a huge surprise.  My mom called me on the Saturday to tell me, wondering if my brother had called me.  He hadn’t.  We are not close and I don’t think I am at the top of the list of people to break bad news to unless it is family related.  My mom is our conduit.

When my mom told me about Mike’s job loss, she told me he cried when he told her.  He was upset and hurt and confused, he loved his job.  Knowing that my brother cried made me sob after I got off of the phone with my mother.  I grabbed a cotton sock near by bed, for no kleenex in sight (and I was still in bed, slacking on a Saturday morning).  I grabbed a lime green cotton sock that I had worn to bed because my feet are always cold, regardless of temperature. I cried until that sock was wet.  I shook and cried and imagined my brother crying.  I had seen it only on one other occasion.  He was working at a part-time job tand was a consistently top salesman.  They offered him a decent severance bu reneged on giving him thousands dollars in commissions.  He spoke with a lawyer that told him it was too expensive to fight for something that might not have a positive outcome.  He took the severance on the following Wednesday, they did not even give him a week to look it over.

I think Mike will be fine, he will get an excellent reference and has made many good contacts in his years in sales.  I am not worried, we live in a province that has a low unemployment rate, is oil rich and he is in the right industry.  We aren’t close, we have very little in common with, I love his two kids, my nieces, but he cried.

My damp sock and sad can not do anything for him, and I guess it is ok.  I said I am sorry and I don’t think he would want anything from me.  But my brother, he cried, and it hurt.