Dear Uncle Bob,

It took my breath away yesterday when my dad texted me and told me you passed away.

It was so sudden. I knew you were on the older side (heck, everyone at The Chapter was old enough to be one of my parents) but I never would have imagined you would have passed away before my wedding.

Before the news, I'd been contemplating adding you and Margaret to the A-List, as you were two of my only coworkers who, in my past life, made a desk job...bearable.

Thanks for humoring my selfie the first time I left ACNSC in March 2014.

I will never forget the year and a half when I shared an office with you. Well, it was more like a copy room with a desk (yours) and a shelving unit/counter space turned into a desk-like structure (mine).

In between our strenuous spurts of work, we spent hours discussing travel, adding to our own blogs (mine for work--most of the time, yours for fun). You told me about travels to England during the holidays and summer/fall motorcycle trips across the United States.

You are the first person I ever met who made conventionally "strange" places into staple stops on your journeys--places like universities and cemeteries. In sharing this, you awakened a love of travel within myself that I had never sensed before.

When I left my part time position at The Chapter so I could focus on school, I dreaded that I would not get to see you on a weekly basis. When you and Margarette came to take me out to Lolo's for lunch between classes one day in the fall semester my senior, I was SO EXCITED to see you two, and couldn't believe how nothing had seemed to change.

Ultimately, I returned to The Chapter full time after graduating, and was disappointed that I was given my own office instead of being "forced" to share a space with you again. Nevertheless, you made sure to come and visit my coat-closet office every day during that bleak hour after lunch when my food was digesting and my brain was thinking about travel--and we talked, and talked, and talked (which was awful for productivity and everyone knew it, but hey--I'm pretty sure a study somewhere says that strong workplace relationships foster positive feelings toward work, so we were doing that!)

Finally, it was after you were "let go" around Christmas 2015 that I realized how unfulfilling a desk job truly was--how spending hours staring at a computer screen in an office was not taking me where I wanted to go in life. My dreaming conspirator, Diet Coke in hand, had left me--and I was left with four cold, white walls, two computer monitors, and nobody to laugh with.

Life has certainly changed a lot since then. I'm a teacher, and I finally feel fulfilled by my job. I think the last time I saw you was on an afternoon when I dropped in to visit all our old coworkers, and you were surprisingly there, dropping off some TSS paperwork for your contract job you still held with them.

I want to say "I wish I kept in touch," or "I wish I had lunch with you and Margarette more often" but I also know if you were here, you would scoff and say something like "Bygones are bygones. Go take a road trip or something."

Thank you for being my work dad. It was an honor sharing an office and tales of adventure with you.

Rest in peace.