Looking For Answers

Wednesday night I stopped at Wal-Mart on my way to work and bought some food to stock up Joe's work cabinet. I had noticed Tuesday night that he had very few items and I thought it would be a nice gesture to restock his cabinet for him. Besides many times in the past Joe has bought me food and snacks for my work desk. Plus he is always willing to share whatever he has in his cabinet with me.

So I restocked his cabinet & showed Old Lady Red everything I had bought him. I told her that I hoped he would notice and contact me. We talked about how he hasn't checked on me once since Oliver died and she said she couldn't understand his lack of compassion. I tried to rationalize that maybe he was so busy with the husband that he didn't have time or maybe he didn't know what to say to me so opted to say nothing. I was trying to give him the benefit of the doubt.

I spent the following day constantly checking my cell phone and email for a message from Joe. As the time of his shift came & went I thought maybe he called in to work and wasn't there to see the stuff I got him. Or maybe he never checked his cabinet since he had so little in there to begin with. I drove to work last night still trying to give Joe the benefit of the doubt.


As soon as I logged onto my work computer, I received the following instant message:

[Thu 02/05] Joe(7:43:34 PM): what is this grocerie store ova here? are you the one that stole the rest of my loaded baked potato pringles the other day?

Camlaw(10:57:42 PM): No...I did not steal anything from you. I noticed you had very little food so I bought you some.

I was floored. Not a thank you, or how nice of you, or even how have you been. But what's this and did you steal from me. I shared the message with Old Lady Red and she couldn't believe it either. She said that his response would have made her mad. I told her it just hurt my feelings even more. She said it's like Joe is treating me like an ex-girlfriend or something.


I then proceeded to tell Old Lady Red how this all began. In the course of my telling her the story I could tell she already knew. When I asked her, she said that Joe had briefly mentioned the cell phone incident. Basically all he said was that this all began because of a cell phone. When I proceeded to tell her the details, she was shocked. It wasn't as petty as Joe made it out to be. She would've been highly upset too if some stranger sent her those text messages.


I finally broke down sobbing on Old Lady Red's shoulder. She just held me and tried to comfort me as I cried. I asked her if I had imagined our friendship. I asked her if maybe Joe & I weren't as close as I perceived us to be. She reassured me that wasn't the case. Everyone knew we were close. It had been a running joke for years now that we're married. And she told me that when he told her of ending our friendship, he called it a "divorce".


I spent the rest of the night mulling everything over in my head. I even typed out this long ass email to Joe. But this morning after much consideration and self editing, I finally just sent him this:

It's been over a week since Oliver passed away. And during that entire time you have not checked on me once. I have received more sympathy and compassion from mere work acquaintances than I have from you....a person who matters the most and who knew how important Ollie was to me. Hell you joked for a long time that I was going to probably have to be institutionalized if/when he died. So why haven't you check on me?


Maybe I will get a response, maybe I won't. I just don't understand why this is happening. I want to know WHY?!