Stephen Yeargin

I have been in enough Baptist churches to know my way around, particularly small community ones. There's a baptistry at the front. The preacher is always going to be in a suit and going to great lengths to learn every visitor's name. The pews are typically the same, with the hymnals on a square box to the back of the one in front of you, and there will be an wooden envelope holder with a spot for a pen for the offering plate. The only time I go to such a venue these days is for weddings and funerals.

Saturday, it was the latter reason.

I should back up. This was a celebration of life rather than a funeral. There wasn't much that changes in the order of the service between those two, only that that the departed is truly only there in spirit. I prefer them over casket services, because people are more comfortable talking at a normal volume rather than hushed tones. The family, friends and former coworkers are all in one place. All were there to celebrate Sam^[1].

Twenty two years ago, Sam happened to be in the college newspaper office when I was first expressing interest to be on the staff. Sam had been the cartoonist and one of the co-editors for the website. She would graduate before I became "full time" for the newspaper the following fall, so we didn't have much of an opportunity to work together. My editor described her aptly as the daughter of a biker and a beauty queen (a fun piece of trivia). I wouldn't see her again until she interviewed at my first post-college job to backfill a position in our marketing department. My manager asked whether I preferred her or another candidate. I'd picked her, and the other guy opted out of the role anyway.

I would later find out why I was even asked -- my manager was heading out on, in her words, a permanent maternity leave at the start of my third year at the company. Sam would work for me and I wasn't getting any say in the matter.

Because there were only two of us, I never gave much thought to any hierarchy. She was an incredibly fast learner, and had a much better sense for design than I did. Which made sense, as I was colorblind and had only made newspaper pages. She actually had the fine arts degree. I would throw together a postcard and she'd look at it, sigh, and then go about fixing the proportions and palette. I was decent at typesetting, but not so much in PhotoShop. She added personality to the catalog and other material that I had no prayer of pulling off. She had lists for everything, and made sense of the chaos quickly. I learned quickly to give in to her mild case of OCD as long as we could keep things delivered on time. I was amazed that she could illustrate things with a mouse. I couldn't even draw basic shapes with one.

All of this was happening in the middle of the 2008 recession. As we worked for a company that sold light construction equipment, there was a lot of inventory still sitting on the shelves. No matter how eye catching our output became, it didn't do a lot of good when the usual customer didn't have the cash to buy it. Still, we did what we could and worked to get promotional reimbursement from some of our vendors that still had a budget for that. A vendor once referred to marketing as "the Crayola people" because we "made things pretty." We took it in stride.

I knew the company's budget was tight, so I wanted her to go to an industry trade show instead of me. It would be a good opportunity to meet some of our vendors and get a feel for our customers. A few weeks before, I was told they wouldn't be sending her. The reason came down to money -- they didn't want to pay for a separate hotel room for the week. I wrote a rather pointed response to management expressing my disagreement -- remember that I was about 25, so I hadn't learned how to navigate such things with a bit more diplomacy. It unfortunately didn't change the outcome.

Some months later, I was pulled into a meeting and was warned that the company would have to make cuts if sales didn't pick up and it was floated that we may need to drop Sam to part time or to find a way to replace her workload. I had already begun looking for a new opportunity by that point, owing some of that to the prior incident. A few weeks later, I made the decision for them by taking another job.

I faithfully recreated the same scene that had happened a year prior for me. Sam was getting the promotion and she wasn't getting a say in the matter. I was glad that was the outcome, but felt terrible all of work previously shared by three people would now be done by her alone. She didn't seem nearly as nervous about it as I was.

She would go on to work there for 15 years.

Along the way, she had a daughter. She had hired in others to help out as business improved. She fought and beat cancer multiple times. And every time we texted, she would say she wanted to meet up soon. I think I only got a chance to go to lunch with her one time about five years in.

In the fall of 2019, I was at a mutual friend's house and had texted her about it. She again said we should go to lunch. I added it to my todo list, and it stayed there until March 2020 when the entire world shut down. She would get another diagnosis right as things things opened up again, and all I could do then was see the occasional update on Facebook. She would always be among the first people to like or comment on a photo of my daughter when either my wife or I shared one.

As I sat in the church pew, I knew it was going to be a challenge. Which is why I was making mental notes about the seat backs rather than the screen that scrolled photos from the years I'd missed out hearing about from her directly. My eyes welled up as guys from her husband's band played between eulogies.

The final song of the service was "Rainbow Connection", which the pastor shared was her choice -- as was the entire playlist -- because she had planned it that way. Music has its way of exciting the soul and sometimes breaking you in half. I mourned the passing of a friend. I also took it as a very difficult lesson in not letting a hectic schedule or a bit of introverted-ness get in the way of maintaining those friendships. We're not here forever, and you will only get so many chances.

Here's to Sam. 🍻