Sad cake

This week I received an email, addressed to the whole company, about a former colleague who used to work for us.

Dear All

Some of you may already know that Jane Smith passed away on Sunday.

Jane worked here until last year. Her warm nature and positive, happy disposition left an impression on many of her colleagues, who maintained their friendships with her. Jane was only in her 30s and so her fight with cancer was both untimely and very sad.

Her funeral, for close friends and family, will take place on Saturday. She requested that donations go to her Hospice.

I will start the collection and pass a card around so you can send wishes to her family. Please drop me a line and let me know if you would like to make a donation.

Regards

This is sad news. Although I never worked with Jane. The people who did work with her, all have fond memories. I'm sure that the few that don't have fond memories of her, chose to keep quiet about it, even though she probably wouldn't find out about it anyway.

This morning, I received a follow up email addressed to the whole office.

To celebrate the life of the lovely Jane, I have brought cake to the office. Please help yourselves and think about Jane while you eat.

Three points.

One: Since when do we celebrate somebody's death?

Two: I didn't know Jane. Am I allowed to have cake?

Three: Do I have to think about her while I eat the cake? I would prefer to have happy thoughts while eating cake. I worry that if I had to eat the cake while thinking about cancer, it would put me off cake.

After the stampeding hooves of the womenfolk settled down after the email, I headed towards the kitchen to see if anything was left.

There was indeed a few slices of carrot cake left. The chocolate cake had already been surrendered to cancerous celebrations.

So ignoring point two above, I grabbed a slice of carrot cake and OH... MY... GOD! Carrot cake has never tasted this good! It was perfect! I don't know if it was the ghost of Jane who was filling the cake with ghostly goodness, or if the cook who made this knew Jane personally and decided to bake the best fucking cake ever, in her memory, but WOW!

After finishing the slice, I took a wander back to the kitchen, hoping that there might be some slices left, but some other crafty mourners beat me to it. Cunts!

But now I had a craving like a heroin addict, but unlike a heroin addict, I didn't crave heroin, so in other words, I was nothing like a heroin addict.

I could just go to the person who brought the cake in and ask him where he bought the cake, but then he would know that I ate the cake, despite not ever knowing Jane, yet I felt that I already had very fond memories of her.

Plan B - Get the person who brought the cake in to spontaneously tell me where he bought the cake. I started following him around the office and sat at his table during lunch. This was awkward as he has a small office to himself with only one chair in it.

Plan C - And before you start judging me on this, I'm the first one to admit that this was wrong on some level. I did some research on the internet and the started forwarding sunbed vouchers to everybody at work (except the person who brought the cake in). I realise that this is a long-term plan, but I don't want to be fat. That would be gross.