Nick Langmaid is my colleague from work at Australia Post. I worked with him last year for over 3 months in 2014. A pretty busy and challenging project - we managed to get it over the line. Of course, there were plenty others working on it. We were just doing our bit.
That was my first project with Post. Nick had been a long timer at Post. He was literally the knowledge bank of all things financial systems. Any questions people had about payments and accounting entries - he had the answer. He knew every system, literally off the back of his palm. While working with Nick, he made sure that I got a strong understanding of how it all connected together. During that time, we also got to discuss about our passion for staying healthy by cycling to work.
In late October 2014, I moved to another project, another office. A few months later, my previous project manager at Post met me in the office and mentioned to me that Nick had a minor heart attack and he was in surgery or something. A month before that another manager in our project had also gone on medical leave to have a bypass done. I was actually joking to my manager that it was because of the stress he created on our project that people were having heart trouble. I told myself that someday in the future, I should go and say hello to Nick and just check about his health. After all, we did work together.
I guess you know by now where this is going. Today, I received an email from my manager that Nick passed away on his way to work in the morning. I was completely shocked. I just blurted out so many abusive words at work that people around me were wondering what was happening. I couldn't take it. I was pissed off with myself that I never took time to go and meet him. At one side I was angry and on another, I was depressed. I was almost in tears and I couldn't speak. I told myself that you can never predict what could go wrong with the heart. I decided to go and meet my manager who gave me the news.
I reached the other office and met him. He and his colleagues were shocked too. In fact, it was all of us together in that one previous project. In that conversation, my manager mentioned to me that it was a cycling related accident and not a heart attack. I immediately realised that I had read about a similar event in the morning. A cyclist was knocked down by a truck in a place called Keilor East. No name was provided but the cyclist did not live. Now, I was even more stressed.
Honestly, I did not expect Nick to leave the world this way. I am at a loss of words but this is cruel. I told myself - Only if I had taken that extra effort to say hello and enquire about his health.... I didn't.
Its such a mad world and in many instances, we are just doing things that have no meaning in our life. Be it work that provides us salary to pay our bills or the monotonous activities to keep our life going, we are caught up in that ever engulfing web that makes us forget and only repent.
Today, I repent that I didn't meet Nick. I just didn't take the time out of my life. I could have easily done it and I should have but I never did. What would stay with me now is my remembrance of a Sean Connery look that Nick had and a deep voice.
I am a victim of my crime called life.
