I knew it wasn't likely to be the happiest of days. The news of Aloy's sudden unexpected death was shocking enough when it came to us in Amsterdam, but I thought I'd gradually got my head around it over the last week and a half. However, I realised I hadn't genuinely taken it all in when Paul and myself tried to work through some of the stuff he'd left behind, figuring out what we needed to give to the family and what needed to be kept as belonging, in some sense, to the department. We did what was needed but it all felt unpleasantly intrusive, as if we were blundering into what had been, and should continue to be, private and personal. I felt uncomfortably close to someone impossibly far away.
And then there was the sadness of letting classes know I would no longer be able to teach them due to the need to re-cast the timetable to provide for Aloy's classes. I wasn't quite prepared for how bad it all made me feel.
But it's a necessary badness, and sadness, I suppose. The price needing to be paid for keeping things going when there's more than a bit of temptation to want to leave it all alone.
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