The “Welcome Back” banner taped to Julian’s monitor was sagging on the left side. It was bright yellow, cheerful, and completely inappropriate for the way his stomach was churning.
It had been one month. The standard bereavement leave, plus two weeks of vacation time he had burned through because he couldn’t face the thought of spreadsheets while his house still smelled like her shampoo.
“There he is!” looking up, Mike from Accounting beamed, clapping Julian on the shoulder. “Good to have you back, buddy. Things were falling apart without the master of the pivot table.”
Julian forced a smile. It felt tight, like a mask that didn’t quite fit. “Thanks, Mike. Good to be back.”
The lie tasted like ash. It wasn’t good to be back. It wasn’t good to be anywhere.
He sat in his chair—the same ergonomic chair he had fought to get approved six months ago. He logged into his computer. The password was the same. The desktop background was the same picture of the beach trip they took last July. But the man sitting in the chair felt like an imposter.
All day, it happened. People stopped by with sympathetic tilts of their heads, offering soft words that all meant the same thing: We are glad you are “better” now. They treated his grief like a flu he had recovered from.
By 3:00 PM, his boss, Karen, called him into her office.
“We need to get you up to speed on the Q3 projections,” she said, sliding a thick file across the desk. “I know it’s a lot, but I’m counting on the old Julian to crush these numbers. We need that shark energy back.”
Julian looked at the file. He looked at Karen. He remembered “the old Julian.” That guy cared deeply about Q3 projections. That guy stressed over quarterly reviews. That guy thought his biggest problem was a delayed vendor shipment.
He looked down at his hands. He wanted to scream. He wanted to tell her that you’re expected to return to who you were before, as if grief was just a pause button you could unclick. They wanted the efficient employee. They wanted the guy who laughed at bad jokes in the breakroom.
But looking at the numbers, they looked like hieroglyphics. They didn’t matter. None of it mattered.
He realized with a terrifying clarity that that version of you ended the day they left. The Julian who cared about this file died in the same hospital room she did. The man sitting here now was a survivor, stripped of his trivial worries, rebuilt with a heavier, darker heart.
“Julian?” Karen asked, her smile faltering. “You with me?”
Julian took a deep breath. He couldn’t resurrect the dead, including his former self. He had to introduce them to the new one.
“I’ll do my best with the numbers, Karen,” Julian said quietly, pushing the file back slightly. “But I’m not who I was. I think it’s going to take me some time to figure out who this new version is.”
He walked out of the office, tearing the sagging “Welcome Back” banner off his monitor. He crumpled it into the trash. He wasn’t back. He was starting over.
