A Tribute to Zach Day

A friend of mine passed away this past weekend. He was only 26 years old. That is only two years older than I am today. His name was Zach Day, and he was one of the most clever, sarcastic, and hilarious people that you could ever meet. He was a part of a very select group of co-workers that I enjoyed being around (and by this, I mean two or three people).

I met up with Zach at a bar on Friday night. We had not planned on meeting up that night; it was a circumstantial same time/same place scenario. Despite the circumstances, that night we bonded. We bonded like we never have before. We discussed work, had a laugh over whom the bartender chose to serve next (never us), and went to the stage together in order to fully appreciate the band playing the bar that night.

I think Zach was there by himself. He was strictly there to hear the band play, while I was there for a birthday party for a friend of a friend of a friend. I didn't necessarily want to attend this birthday party for a distant relative of a friend. And I could tell Zach was only there for the band in the first place, thus we were both stuck in the bar for the duration of the Friday night.

Thus, a commonality struck between our loneliness and unwillingness to socialize with the partygoers. We toasted our beverages, shared a few laughs, and discussed the bullshit job that we both put up with despite our hard-earned Bachelors degrees.

Later that week I talked to one of the few female co-workers that we both had a decent relationship with. She told me that Zach had gone on vacation without telling anybody. Therefore he was in deep shit with the higher-ups of our department. I honestly thought nothing of it. I thought it must have been some mix up with red-tape paper work. Either the paperwork got tossed out by mistake or never was never processed at all. Every co-worker who loved any sort of drama (and by that I mean everyone) thought Zach would be fired if he did not call the head of the department or his immediate supervisor before a few days had passed.

When I found out on Thursday, which is the day I felt the need to write this, that Zach Day had died the very same weekend I saw him on that lonely Friday night. I was devastated. I wanted absolute solitude to be alone with my thoughts, regret, and devastation.

I told this to my girlfriend, but she could not possibly understand what I was feeling at the time. She came to my apartment while I was still very upset and told me that I was not acting exactly like a grieving person should act. Bewildered, I then asked her what a grieving person should be like. She said, "They express their feelings to the ones that care about them the most."

I wish I could have.

I could see what she was getting at when she told me all of this, but I was much more complacent alone, buried underneath my own thoughts. I got more upset about the entire incident as she egged me on. Eventually, I got fed up with her pseudo-psychology lesson and asked her to leave. When she refused, I got up and left my own apartment myself. There was no point to staying and fighting while simultaneously grieving and worrying about the recently deceased co-worker I had seen days before.

I called in to work tomorrow. I couldn't stand to deal with the entire department getting together while a supervisor (Zach and I both probably despised) announced the horrible news to the clueless co-workers we shared. That would only remind me of the last few moments we had together.

These last moments are the same few that I that I try to stop repeating over and over in my mind.

When something this tragic occurs I cannot help but to think how fragile life is. Also, I cannot help to think how one minute you can be having a great time with good people, good drinks, and good music, and in the next moment to gone, wiped out from existence.

However melancholy this may sound, it is intended to be a tribute to the most openly lazy employee to ever grace our presence within the work force. And for this, I salute you, Zach.

You may not have been the most efficient or hard working employee in our department, but you sure as hell were the most realistic and down-to-earth. And for that, you have my undying respect.