Because I appreciate structure, I tend to be a high ritual person. No, I do not need fancy or elaborate rituals. Sometimes eating Cheerios is enough of a way to start the day. No, I do not need rituals to �tell me how I feel� as someone I know recently put it. I usually know how I feel or can figure it out reasonably quickly if I need to know. Instead, I need ritual, particularly at key moments, to allow me to concentrate on feeling. Lack of ritual requires too much thinking.

I also need rituals to connect me to the community at just the moments it would be easy to spin away. While I prefer my own rituals, the familiar rituals, sometimes any template will do. In other words, when someone dies, I need a funeral or a memorial service or something.

A co-worker died early Sunday morning. She had been fighting breast cancer valiantly for five or six years. Time after time, the cancer returned. She was so sunny and so positive that many people stopped seeing what was really in front of them. I admired her, I like working with her (and, once, under her), and I will miss her. But, in death, unlike in life, she has done something untidy that takes her out of the community. She has slipped away with no funeral, no memorial service, and, short of an obituary, no public acknowledgement at all.

Monday morning, our division head came in and promptly locked herself in her office without saying a word to anyone. As near as I can tell, she never said anything all day except to fellow members of the administrative team and even that was almost entirely business. When the rest of the office learned there would be no funeral, people were left, well, hanging---hanging around the reception area, hanging around the water cooler, and hanging around the library. When an entire office of lawyers lets themselves look lost, you know they are lost.

Our own supervisor was willing to do some chatting about the co-worker but seemed to be spending more time seeking comfort than giving it. I found myself talking to the ever-so-young attorney in the next office who had never faced the death of someone she knew well. Sometimes being a mother is wonderful training for the office.

Some people do well with total denial. It was becoming all too obvious that most of the attorneys in the office were not among that group. So, with the help of another attorney, I fulfilled my usual role as wife of the office. I figured out a ritual, announced that anyone who wanted to come to a local restaurant for a group lunch was invited, from secretary to investigator to attorney (and even to administration), and offered to float a loan to anyone who was short of cash because being together was more important than the finances. My supervisor came and even rose to the occasion and proposed a water toast to our co-worker and said a few words.

So now I guess I�ve invented the ritual for otherwise unacknowledged office deaths. I hope I have no further occasion to use it.

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