Dear Dr. Lorenzo by Margo McCall

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Dear Dr. Lorenzo, (former) Dean of the School of  Lifelong Learning,

I want you to know I did it with tenderness, that when the order came down, I considered your impressive legacy and tireless commitment to the School before allowing my finger to hover over the Delete key. I could have highlighted your entire name and title and disappeared you with one keystroke. But I was gentle, killing off the letters one by one, and even having a moment of reflection before hitting Save.
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I want you to know you’re not the first person I’ve erased. In my years working in both academia and the private sector, I’ve removed many people. Some have gone on to bigger and better, been promoted or transferred or taken on a new role in a different department, happily blossoming to life on a different website. But when the deletion means you’re just gone—in the event of suicide, fatal car accident, or, as with you, being unceremoniously canned—it’s always sad.

You’re there one minute—2x3 color headshot, full name, and official title—and gone the next. For a day or two, you’ll still come up in search results, but anyone clicking the link will find the space you occupied empty. And then after the spiders’ next crawl, even those phantom results will disappear.  Maybe someone will have cached the page on the Wayback Machine, but few people even know about that dusty museum hiding in the far reaches of the Internet.
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I want you to know that I wonder how you’re feeling. What you’re thinking as you stare out the window of your huge house bought with public funds, at that expansive green lawn kept trimmed by underpaid gardeners. Letting it all sink in, I imagine. Nonexistence takes some getting used to.

When the President called a hasty meeting at 3 o’clock on a Friday, the younger staff went into a frenzy. But experienced with this sort of thing, I was already digging out my executioner’s hood. All-Staff meetings on Friday afternoons only mean one thing.

You weren’t even allowed to gather your belongings before the Associate Vice President of Human Resources marched you off campus and held out her hand for your keys. You must have really crossed the line to have not been given the option to retire and spend more time with your family. I will not dignify the rumors by asking which of them are true.

I want you to know I waited until Monday morning. After your decade of service to the School, a two-day grace period seemed only fair. I wanted you to be reassured of your existence a little longer by the ten-year-old headshot you insisted I use in place of the more recent one where your hair is gray and your eyes look tired.

But maybe you’re not the type to visit a website for proof of your existence. You probably have old-school ways of validation: some crumbling monument of yellowed paper at home in your desk drawer. A commendation from the mayor with the city seal, or the governor’s invitation to join an ad-hoc committee. A wife who can hide the alarm in her eyes and tell you it will be okay. For people like you, it will always be okay.

Whether you’re on the website or not, we know who you were. You may not have seen us, but we saw you. We’ll miss you rushing through the hallways in your Armani suits trailed by the exotic scent of sandalwood. Smiling and nodding at your constituents like you were the Pope or a Mafia Don.
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Whatever you plan to do next, please don’t worry about us. I want you to know we’ll continue to do our jobs—so well we’ll never be noticed. And when your replacement is named, we’ll serve at their pleasure just as we served at yours. Carrying out our tasks. Performing our duties. Doing the things us invisible people do.

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Margo McCall’s short stories have appeared in Pacific Review, Hypertext, blank spaces, EVENT, and other journals. Her nonfiction has appeared in Herizons, Lifeboat, L.A. Times, and other publications. A former journalist and graduate of the M.A. in Creative Writing program at California State University Northridge, she divides her time between the Canadian prairies and Southern California. For more, visit http://www.margomccall.com