22 March 2004

Simeon Seinen

About a year ago, I went to KVCC with a friend of mine and scanned in a bunch of negatives, several containing pictures of coworkers from up at Western Michigan University. One of them was of Simeon Seinen, who was not only a coworker, but someone I also came to consider a friend in the three years I worked with him.

I had hoped I would be using these pictures one day on my site to recount memories of my coworkers as new stories would come up. However, I had never even imagined that one day I would have to mention any of these folks like I have to now.

I woke up today and checked my e-mail, and received a message forwarded from someone who had searched for Simeon on the web, and had found my site. The message said that Simeon had died last Friday (19 March) as a result of a terrible athsma attack. Shocked, I called my boss at work (who had not heard). Today I contacted, and am still trying to contact, various other coworkers and friends of Simeon.

I have never lost any young friends of mine. Everyone who has ever died to whom I have been close has been older; the shock this time is absolutely amazing. It seems like just yesterday that I went to visit him at the Apple Store in Troy, where he had been hired at a Mac Genius; or that we were at TCS, making little devices to shoot CDs off into the air, so that they would spin and crash on the pavement; or even the day I ordered my laptop, and Simeon was helpful enough to let me order it on his credit card, as I only had cash and couldn't order my laptop online.

In working with him for so long, we came up with so many silly plans, dinked around with innumerable computers (Simeon could strip and rebuild a Macintosh LC II in just barely under a minute), or just ended up doing nothing and ordering Chinese food. The stories are innumerable and impossible for me to all remember, and it just seems incomprehensible to me that I'll never get another chance to visit him in Troy, or see him rocking out with his band, or get to join him for a cigarette on the loading dock.

I guess there's really nothing else I can say—shock still obscures my ability to be eloquent.