In other news?
Jun. 29th, 2005 07:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kyburgDreams last night were unusually vivid and lingering - full color, entire conversations, the whole bit.
I was in a city that looked a lot like downtown Los Angeles, only clean and pretty. They rolled up the scenery in the morning, turned off the lights and shifted the landscape to a "day" view. Don't know if this is bad, but I thought it looked pretty cool, to be honest. Think an ILM version of your high school stage set, complete with smells - that just rolls off stage.
But I had to say goodbye to someone I'd loved again.
Back when Cliff first became sick in 1995, I was working for a start-up burn up called Peritronics Medical, which made monitoring equipment for women in labor - one of the first archiving systems that put fetal monitoring strips on laser discs. It had been built by a Vietnamese programmer who traded code for housing to a group of four perinatologists in Arcadia. I came in at the tail end, as the money was running out and the board was trying to find a buyer for the technology.
I was working for the Director of Sales, and he was pushing to build the company instead of selling it.
He lost. He was fired in such a spectacular fashion, he almost took me with him by association.
I adored him. He had been supportive, fun, caring, intelligent - all through the scariest part of Cliff's passing, and most of it on the phone from Chicago where he lived. I was in Brea, California. My boss was in Chicago, and it worked. I introduced the sales staff to AOL (and we used it extensively), SABRE and all the fun things the internet could offer in 1995...and Dan introduced me to unagi and other delicious things I would never have attempted otherwise. "Here, this is really good." In Vegas, doing a trade show, trying like hell to save the company.
I was able to get him and Cliff together for one sushi dinner. Just once.
And last night, we were saying goodbye again because I was going to start working for someone else, and the show was ending. Again.
I cried and cried and cried. My family came and got me. Just packed me up and took me away. My 1995 self.
I had when I found out he'd been fired. Ran out to a pay phone and left voicemail for him at home. I was never allowed to speak to him again (and Cliff's status made that a death threat to him. If I got fired, he lost health coverage - and he'd been on full life support more than once by this time).
I've looked - but haven't found him again. Every Christmas, I unpack a decorative white Santa Claus he gave me as a gift that year - and I remember him again. And I miss him. He had a smooth, wicked sense of humor too.
I've looked. I've missed him.
Old clients have found me over the years via the internet, looking for someone from the company because their unit now needs maintenance and there's no contacts left. The technology was sold, of course - but I've never seen it again in the hospitals I've visited, but I do see our old competition there now.
Start up burn up. Nobody left standing. Of the two people who interviewed me, one died and the other was fired.
What an entry on my resume.
I still miss them.
How did I leave? After surviving two company presidents, four CFOs and two other Sales Directors, I told them to pay my health insurance for the balance of 1996, and I'd leave. They said yes, I left and had a new job in two days. Another start-up, and it would end badly in 1997 - but I had another job.
And I lost one of the best friends I ever had.
I cried and cried and cried. Somewhere along the way to 1998, I found a way to stop crying. Frankly, if I hadn't, I'd be doing nothing else to this day. I swear it.
I was in a city that looked a lot like downtown Los Angeles, only clean and pretty. They rolled up the scenery in the morning, turned off the lights and shifted the landscape to a "day" view. Don't know if this is bad, but I thought it looked pretty cool, to be honest. Think an ILM version of your high school stage set, complete with smells - that just rolls off stage.
But I had to say goodbye to someone I'd loved again.
Back when Cliff first became sick in 1995, I was working for a start-up burn up called Peritronics Medical, which made monitoring equipment for women in labor - one of the first archiving systems that put fetal monitoring strips on laser discs. It had been built by a Vietnamese programmer who traded code for housing to a group of four perinatologists in Arcadia. I came in at the tail end, as the money was running out and the board was trying to find a buyer for the technology.
I was working for the Director of Sales, and he was pushing to build the company instead of selling it.
He lost. He was fired in such a spectacular fashion, he almost took me with him by association.
I adored him. He had been supportive, fun, caring, intelligent - all through the scariest part of Cliff's passing, and most of it on the phone from Chicago where he lived. I was in Brea, California. My boss was in Chicago, and it worked. I introduced the sales staff to AOL (and we used it extensively), SABRE and all the fun things the internet could offer in 1995...and Dan introduced me to unagi and other delicious things I would never have attempted otherwise. "Here, this is really good." In Vegas, doing a trade show, trying like hell to save the company.
I was able to get him and Cliff together for one sushi dinner. Just once.
And last night, we were saying goodbye again because I was going to start working for someone else, and the show was ending. Again.
I cried and cried and cried. My family came and got me. Just packed me up and took me away. My 1995 self.
I had when I found out he'd been fired. Ran out to a pay phone and left voicemail for him at home. I was never allowed to speak to him again (and Cliff's status made that a death threat to him. If I got fired, he lost health coverage - and he'd been on full life support more than once by this time).
I've looked - but haven't found him again. Every Christmas, I unpack a decorative white Santa Claus he gave me as a gift that year - and I remember him again. And I miss him. He had a smooth, wicked sense of humor too.
I've looked. I've missed him.
Old clients have found me over the years via the internet, looking for someone from the company because their unit now needs maintenance and there's no contacts left. The technology was sold, of course - but I've never seen it again in the hospitals I've visited, but I do see our old competition there now.
Start up burn up. Nobody left standing. Of the two people who interviewed me, one died and the other was fired.
What an entry on my resume.
I still miss them.
How did I leave? After surviving two company presidents, four CFOs and two other Sales Directors, I told them to pay my health insurance for the balance of 1996, and I'd leave. They said yes, I left and had a new job in two days. Another start-up, and it would end badly in 1997 - but I had another job.
And I lost one of the best friends I ever had.
I cried and cried and cried. Somewhere along the way to 1998, I found a way to stop crying. Frankly, if I hadn't, I'd be doing nothing else to this day. I swear it.
