State of Shock

This morning, at work, I'm copied on an email regarding a colleague (from another company) that I have been working with since I started at Matrix. All the email said was that his son, who his wife and him recently adopted from Russia, had passed away, and that he was hospitalized. That was all we got.

Of course my coworker and I were baffled, so she called his coworker to get more details. The called coworker was very cryptic, explained that she wasn't at liberty to say anything about the email, and that was it. Ok... we were confused by her answer, and somewhat annoyed that she wouldn't tell us what happened.

The end of the day comes around, about when I'm leaving, and my coworker has a distressed look on her face.

"Ray just said he heard on the radio that a little boy was left in a car yesterday, in the heat, and died. This happened in the area where he lives..."

It couldn't be. We checked the internet and there was no information regarding the story. I lstened to the news all the way home, and nothing. As soon as I turned on the tv when I got home, there it was, confirmed. It was his little boy, who was left in the car, all day, and died. Miles, the dad, collapsed and was hospitalized after he discovered the fate of his son.

Honestly, I just can't believe it. It's very surreal. You hear these stories, but it's never about someone you ACTUALLY know, someone you interact with on a regular basis. It's unbelievable.

Miles is being charged with manslaughter. Miles is one of the nicest, most genuine people I know, and he was so unbelievably excited about this little boy.

This is going to change his life forever. It already has. His life will never be the same, neither will ours. It just is so unreal to know, that honestly, we will really never see him again. You don't recover from something like this. This just envokes feelings that I can't even describe. It's unreal, terrible, deeply saddening... it's unreal.