Retirement - The Last Days

There is an odd feeling of finality as you wait out the final days of your sentence.   Like a prisoner waiting for parole your life becomes gentler as you experience increasing work release. You have long seen what’s on the other side yet for 33 years it seemed so close but yet so far.  In a few short days I will be liberated but it comes with a calliope of associated feelings, some sweet, some sour.  

Work in many ways is like a relationship.  It becomes a major part of your life and is the foundation of your routine.  Everything is scheduled around its needs and a significant part of your day consists of meeting the associated obligations.  Since I was a young man most of what I do, even in my personal life is governed by my job.  Like asking permission from a parent, supervisors exercise a god like authority evaluating, considering and permitting many facets of life.  In the case of the self-employed their lives are equally restricted by the needs of their businesses. 

In the realm of personal relationships we often spend more time with coworkers than we do with our own family.  Never was there a truer expression than the idea of the “work wife” or “work husband.”  There have been many offices where for 8 hours a day I lived in a plutonic relationship with a woman other than my wife.  We talked, we laughed and we shared like a married couple.  The only difference was the experience lasted 8 hours, five days a week and then we went home to our own lives.

I miss my work wives, especially Beth and Chelisa, but you know when it is happening the relationship is temporary.  Almost like a time defined contract one day it will end and that will be that.  

Like everything in life careers must end at some point.  There are very few of us who have a skill they will live with until their last breath.  An artist will never lose their art, a musician their song.  For myself as a civil servant, when I walk out the door for the last time I will leave the skills and duties I once dedicated my life to as a memory of the past.  

Despite my best hopes I don’t believe I will be allowed to just fade into the night.  A gathering has been planned in my honor that I will be forced to endure.  In many ways I feel like it is more like a funeral.  The act of a funeral has little to do with the dead, it is a therapeutic act for those the dead left behind.  In my working world I suppose it is an act fulfilled mostly out of the perception of obligation.  

My good friend Dave always attempts to give me perspective.  His words are kind.. “Patrick,” he says, “It’s a big deal.  Take it with pride and a well-earned sense of accomplishment.  You represent a wealth of experience that is walking out the door.”  It’s hard for me to think of myself in that way, it is just not in my DNA.  I have trouble seeing my own value largely a result of the actions of other’s when there were periods that it really mattered.    Moments when I tried to express my value but was not recognized.  In that way it feels like a hollow expression.  

I will miss the camaraderie.  My last assignment while mentally less than stimulating has been a pleasure in that I have worked with young agents just starting their careers.  In that way they seemed to value my age and the perception of wisdom.  I have often felt like Grandpa Simpson when he commences a response with an elderly sounding “In my day…”   I suppose deep inside we all want to feel valued and careers are a piece of this puzzle. 

One thing I can say for sure is that what from any point in time can seem like an eternity, in retrospect seems lightening fast.  How quickly we grow old and find huge chunks of our life in the rear view mirror.  Memories can be haunting or reassuring.  They can embrace us or send quiet chills of unresolved tension through our bodies.  Love and lament never end, its what fuels us until the final day when we let it all go.