Thank you for sharing this piece. Navigating a loss like this in a purely remote environment must have been incredibly challenging — grieving feels like an exercise that we do best together in the same physical space. Sometimes you just need someone to give you a hug.
The hardest thing I have ever done as a manager was gather my team into a room and let them know that one of our team members, a young woman just beginning her career, died in a car accident. The accident happened the night before my wedding. I came back to work 36 hours after my wedding, and a few days before leaving for my honeymoon. The first email in my inbox was from a friend of hers telling me what had happened. I walked into work to an office full of people wanting to hear about my wedding and instead I had to tell them that someone they knew and cared about was gone.
She sent me an email sharing her joy about my wedding that I didn't read until after I had already learned of her death.
Six years later and the memories are still painful.