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Final Farewell
mid 1980s
Every so often I'll get a temp assignment that's for "a few days" that goes for weeks or months.
I got an assignment at BASF in Parsippany "for about five days" to input chemical formulations into a big database.
This was still relatively pre-Internet and even Windows was a bit primitive.
The database was created in-house, its monitor screen was the classic green screen with dot-made characters.
The database also didn't work, so for about eighteen months or so until it finally got working, I was kept around as an assistant to the main executive assistant
(about every few weeks or months I'd be brought over to another computer where I'd enter the information
[about a dozen software writers all hanging over my shoulder]
but each attempt would have something go wrong so the entry would not completely go through, and they'd rush off for a few weeks and I'd just go back to work).
She was very pleasant and between Stuff To Do, we'd chat on all manner of things.
She became aware of my interest in the paranormal and related an interesting experience of hers.
For a while she'd had one of those wee-hours newspaper delivery routes.
She would park and hand deliver the papers if not at a door, then usually into standing mailboxes and such.
One quiet morning as she opened a mailbox, she suddenly turned and standing a couple of feet away was a good friend of hers from whom for a while she'd not heard.
The friend was just standing there, looking at her almost quizzically.
Then the seemingly solid woman... simply vanished.
She knew her friend must have died.
Later that day she called to learn from the friend's family that indeed she had died in hospital, at the very minute at which the woman's spirit appeared to her friend.
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