First Week!

As of 5:30 p.m. today, which is in 34 minutes, I will have worked at The Kansas City Star for six full days. My cute little cubicle is decorated with pictures, notes, a teddy bear, and water beads (HAVE YOU EVER PLAYED WITH WATER BEADS?! They're SO distracting...). I'm settling into a routine, and I know my way around the system fairly well. I have figured out which of my coworkers I love and which ones I do not care for, which ones don't think it's weird when I laugh at the stupidest things, and which ones will only say the bare minimum when I accidently run into them coming around the corner. I've laughed a lot and even almost cried once.

Working as an Obituary Representative sounds very morbid, weird, and a bit boring. Thank God for the people I work with; they make it much more lighthearted than I ever expected it to be. I'm not sure if that's a good thing, but I will choose to look at it as such.

Sometimes it does tend to get a little depressing - like, when I have to print a notice and picture for a five-year-old. It's the pictures that are always hard. Until you see a picture, you can kinda keep the name in an anonymous box in your head and not take anything personally. But then you see the picture of a chubby-cheeked, happy-go-lucky little tyke -- and suddenly the stuff his parents wrote in his obituary seem a bit more heartwrenching.

It's really awful to sit down and actively think about; all of these people, all the names and faces, don't exist anymore. Someone's at last giving them their inch of "fame," but it's the end of their life. That specific person won't ever be alive on this earth again. That's pretty strange to process.

When it gets busy, all the names start running together, and if one of my coworkers asks me if I did so-and-so's obit, I have to look at my list to remember, even though I usually remember names easily. And even though it doesn't really matter, I try to avoid that. These were real people, with lives and hearts and families and wants and desires, just like me, and they deserve to be remembered.

Before, I never understood why people would pay out the butt for a little square of words in the newspaper-and, my, do they cost an arm and a leg!-but now I am beginning to realize that for some, it's a way of remembering the person they loved one last time. It's how they share what they care about with the world. It's important to them, so it should be important to me.

There is so much more I want to tell you about! I promise tomorrow I'll say happy, nice stuff! :)