There one minute, gone the next...

[Mr Depressed]

I'm feeling quite shocked this evening, I have to admit.

A colleague of mine took a call in work earlier today and it turned out to be from the police. Cutting a long story short, they were seeing if we had any next of kin details for a driver who only left us four weeks ago. Obviously they couldn't go into any details, but they could confirm that he has indeed died. They only contacted us as they were struggling to trace any details themselves and they'd found paperwork relating to us, as a former employer, in his house.

Unfortunately, he's someone who we only had scant personal information on. Even in the four years he worked for the company. Between all of us, all we knew is that he had a sister who lives in Bedford (but no contact details) and two 'grown-up' children in their 20s who both live abroad somewhere (but again, no contact details). We also knew he'd been divorced for several years and as far as we're aware, beyond the initial interview/first week or so in the job never mentioned his ex-wife at all. All we had was his home address, bank details, land line and mobile number - so on this occasion we were unfortunately of no help to the police.

He was only in his very early fifties and have no idea what could have happened to him. We weren't aware of any illness e.t.c... He used to go on holiday to Thailand and we knew over the last seven or eight months that he was planning to starting a new life there. He left us for that reason as he was about ready to go... As far as we're aware, he was now across there as his Facebook account, according to a fellow colleague who he's friends with on there, was still active up to the back end of last week. He's been through his Facebook account to see if there was any contact details on it which he could pass onto the police, but it turns out there's nothing of any use on there either. There's pictures of all sorts of people on it, but nothing at all to link them to family e.t.c... to try and get in touch that way. It's all very odd.

We don't know how he died or where he was found - and we'll never likely to know either. Did he make it to Thailand and something tragic happened over there? Was he still at home making plans/getting ready to leave and found there? All we can do is surmise.

I'm not upset particularly as I didn't work directly with him or know him overly as well as some others. It was more of a "hello" and the odd polite sentence if we passed one another e.t.c... He was perfectly fine with me whenever I did see him, though. It's just more of a shock, than anything. You shake someone's hand to wish them well on their final day, all is well and then barely a month later he's died.

I've known someone leaving us to retire and have passed away about 18 months later which I thought was reasonably quick. I've also known someone to leave the company and pass away in sad circumstances around three months later, but to die barely a month after leaving (and nowhere near retirement age) is a new record for me... I think I'll be hard-pushed to ever beat that.

It just goes to show how unpredictable life really can be.