We tried at first, but we were so overwhelmed by the rate of deaths from the earliest moments of the pandemic that the org couldn't keep reporting them. It was a demoralizing effort for HR to try to put something, even a few words together for everyone, and it's left a lasting pallor where vibrant personal touches once were. People continue to vanish, and there's still no notice that, or how, they've moved on.
Our General Counsel and I met for the last time during the early months of the pandemic. Like most people during the shutdown, he hadn't seen anyone outside his immediate family or had a chance to tell a good story in a few months, which would have eventually killed him, anyway, and I got an earful as he unloaded all the work he was wrapping up. After, as lawyers excel at, he wrote a great letter to our CIO about it that led to probably my favorite exchange between us.
Six months later, someone called me to say they were headed to Legal because someone had died, and I was struck by an immediate sense of dread. I searched our website for any word, then our directory, and then for local obits and found nothing. Even the grapevine was silent, so I called his admin who pretty casually told me our GC had died six weeks prior.
Almost a year to the day later, the mechanisms caught up, and the org put out a "Remembering $generalCounselor". By then, we'd missed his funeral, his family had relocated, and many felt awkward trying to send condolences so late. Watching other's surprise, shame, and sadness wasn't reassuring, even if it told me I wasn't the only one.
We're not small, but we're personal, and each death has left a little void that we collectively haven't acknowledged or addressed. We still don't have a way to handle the losses and haven't talked about it. Having old saved contacts pop up after their extensions are reassigned is inevitably like a call from the grave. I try to keep in touch to keep track, but little by little, the connections are fading, and the memory and history of us with them.