I’ve spent a lot of time this week thinking about Cory. About the conversations we had, the things that made us laugh, and all those little moments over the last 15 years that I never imagined I would be sitting here trying to put into words.

I didn’t work with Cory every day, like so many of my coworkers did. My relationship with him was different, and I can only speak from my own perspective and my heart about the Cory I knew.

For me, Cory was one of those rare people I could tell the absolute, unvarnished truth. He would absorb it, and he would give it right back to me in exactly the same way I had given it to him. No sugarcoating, no dancing around things, and no worrying about how the other person might take it. We could just be honest with one another, and I valued that more than he probably knew.

The two things we had most in common were our love of music and our children.

In 15 years, I can only recall one single time that I was able to tell Cory about a song he hadn’t heard. One time. His love of music was absolutely astounding. And much like my own taste, there were no boundaries. No genre he wouldn’t cross into, no decade, no style. He loved pieces and parts of every bit of it.

And when it came to his love for his son, we spoke the same language.

We were those parents who talked about what was going on in our kids’ lives. The milestones, the funny things, the challenges, the things that made us proud. It was always this easy give and take.

His Cruz is several years older than my daughter, but Cory could still relate to the milestones we were hitting and the things we were experiencing. And I got to hear about where Cruz was in his own life, what he was doing, and the young man he was becoming.

Cory was just an amazing dad. You didn’t have to know him particularly well to understand how much he loved his son. It was simply part of who he was.

On par with those things, what I found most amazing about Cory was his overall chill personality.

In my mind, I can still see him walking around with a pencil tucked behind his ear, like someone would have had a cigarette in the ’90s. Hat on or hat off, just going at it.

He tackled everything to the fullest, but he did it in his own way. When Cory talked, people listened. Sometimes he made you laugh, sometimes he made you think, but he never needed to be the loudest to be heard.

The last conversation I had with Cory was about a week before we lost him. And it wasn’t my favorite conversation.

Not because Cory had done anything wrong. We were simply having one of those difficult conversations about business, about adjustments being made, and about the realities of what was ahead.

And Cory looked me dead in the eye and said, “You don’t have to worry about us. I know I’m with you till the wheels fall off.”

I cannot tell you how much that meant to me.

It was a hard conversation. One of those conversations you don’t particularly want to have, but you know you have to. And if it weren’t for Cory and the people around him who feel the same way, it would have been an impossible, insurmountable conversation to have without breaking apart.

But that was Cory.

Steady. Loyal. Honest. And somehow able to make the hardest things feel a little less hard.

One of the most astounding things to witness this week has been the sheer number of people who reached out when they heard about Cory.

So many people have crossed through our work lives over the years. People who have come and gone, some on good terms and some on not-so-good terms. But when they heard about Cory, the response was remarkably the same.

“Oh my God.”

“Why?”

“How?”

“Not Cory.”

And as someone who is very much in that same camp of Oh my God. Why? How? Not Cory, I think that says more about the man he was than almost anything else I could write.

He never needed to be the center of attention. He was just Cory.

And that was enough.

I titled this The King of Too Soon, not because we lost him too soon, although we absolutely did, but because of his jokes and his timing.

I spoke with one of his best friends at work this week, and I told her a joke that I knew some people might find irreverent. But I knew she would get it, because that’s just who we are as people. And, more importantly, that’s who Cory was.

She told me that she had forgotten to do something that had been assigned to Cory, and she joked about how lazy he was, that he just couldn’t be bothered to get in there and do it.

And all she could think was that Cory would have absolutely loved that joke.

Because Cory was the king of too soon.

And that is a crown we have to carry on.

We have to make sure that the beautiful irreverence Cory brought into our lives isn’t lost. That we don’t lose our laughter, our snark, our jokes, or our ability to find something funny even when the circumstances suggest we probably shouldn’t.

Because who is going to help us make a wall of shame out of all the pictures people leave behind in the books they return? Pictures that are embarrassing beyond words.

Who is going to write a poem and post it on the wall reminding everyone to flush twice so they don’t make the entire corridor smell?

Who is going to decorate their scooter, their computer, and seemingly everything around them with the most hilariously irreverent things imaginable?

Who is going to do those things if we don’t take up that mantle and keep it going?

I think that’s part of how we keep Cory alive in our hearts. Not just by remembering him, but by continuing the laughter he brought into our lives. By telling the jokes that are probably a little too soon, by laughing when we know he would have laughed, and by refusing to let that beautiful irreverence disappear.

Because although Cory was the king of too soon, the crown doesn’t have to go with him.

We can carry it forward.

Fifteen years is a long time to know someone. Long enough to share a lot of conversations, a lot of music, a lot of stories about our kids, and a lot of moments that probably didn’t seem particularly important at the time.

But they were.

I am thankful for his honesty, his loyalty, his humor, and his friendship. For the conversations, the music, and the laughter. For the way he could make even a difficult conversation feel like we were going to be okay.

And for reminding us that sometimes the most inappropriate joke at the most inappropriate time is exactly what we need.

I wish there had been more time. More music. More conversations. More milestones to share. And certainly more jokes that came entirely too soon.

But I am grateful for every bit of the time we had.

I am so thankful for having known him.