Hard to explain how it sucks. Less obvious than it is when you lose someone to whom you’re real close.
You don’t want to overdo it.
A co-worker I really liked died suddenly several years ago.
He was a funny old guy who did circuit layout. He was all crippled up from some bullshit that happened. License plate on his car was GIMP.
He would get hilariously angry at anyone who did anything stupid and impeded his progress on his layout. Really good swearer, inventive, almost lyrical.
I was pretty efficient and laughed at everything he did, so we got along great.
He would say various crude things about the (few) attractive young women in the office. Terrible things, I suppose. But it was just him and me, and implicit (sometimes explicit) was the fact that he was this gimpy old man and these women with their tits and asses and so forth had ultimate power over him. Plus he was really really funny.
We often had to go to the large-format copier to get printouts. On one occasion, a young woman was there waiting for her copies. She happened to be deaf as well as fairly voluptuous.
No one else is around, we’re like two feet away from her, waiting for the copier.
This guy nudged me with his cane and nodded at her ass, the existence of which wasn’t news to me.
“I CAN SEE HER PANTY LINES.” Really, really loud.
I looked at him, stunned. “Mike, what….”
He shrugged. “Ahhhhhh, she can’t hear us.” Somehow in this tone of voice that made him not a dick. Like he was a little sad she didn’t know he was appreciating her in his way. I laughed and laughed later, when I had the space to do it.
Anyway, he was leaving his kids’ house, slipped on the porch, fell down the stairs. Bonked his head, poof. Out like a light, never came back. Died a few hours later.
So going to work got a little shittier. I meant to write to his wife, then too much time passed and it would have been weird to do it. Plus I would have had to leave out a lot of stuff.