Retired Day One

13 January 2020

Today was the first day of my retirement.  In my mind I had an idealized version of the day.  Sleep in, read the Washington Post on my iPad, get some coffee and move some boxes about.  Woke up at the same time I always wake up, even without the phone’s alarms.  The crème colored four footed alarm went off relentlessly.  

One food was in the cat’s dish, and water in her  bowl for the day, I ended making the coffee and having some cereal.  Today, this was it, the first day of retirement.  The party was Friday night.  I had more alcohol than I have had in many months.  Saturday was kind of a waste.  No hangover, but no motivation was present all day that day. Sunday we were prisoners to the “ice” storm.  There had been predications of a terrible storm, but it was an average storm.  Made travel pretty sketchy and so we stayed in all day.

Probably the high point of today was opening the cards and the gift bags.  There were some people who really liked us.  I get the sense my wife was more necessary to her department than I was to mine.  So it goes.  But the party was a success.  There were a goodly number of people, I would estimate 60-70 who showed up in total.  They were good folks to a person. They bought me drinks and they said kind things.  Nobody stood there and glared appearing simply out of obligation.  

I did get one task done today.  I went over and got one of my two new pairs of glasses.  A photo is above.  Let me know what you think. The one thing I was not going to let slip by was the commitment to writing.  Given that I now have “time to write” I was not going to let the day go without creating something.  

Over the last week that I was at work I did a countdown.  For each day I offered up quotes.  Spinoza, Hesse, Patel, Sendak and Hilton found their way onto the door leading to the break room. What I tried to do was offer some of the best quotes I could find on the concluding of one’s affairs and moving on. Grabbing quotes that really caught my eye was a bit tough.  So many things that I remember reading that handled goodbyes well were relatively dark.  What I wanted was something real, i.e., there would be a clear separation, a sense of absence but there would be no edge of dread that infuses so many quotes.

I think I got the right quotes for me. 

There came a moment at about 4:10 pm on last Friday when my heart ached.  My office was empty. My cases were done.  My connection to the computer system of the state had been severed.  All that remained was for someone to pick me up. 19 1/3 years had flown by so quickly.  Looking at the neutral colored walls and the faux wood bench and tables, I felt lost, I felt empty. I mean it was not like I didn’t have a plan to retire, I did.  But still, the emptiness of the space left me with just a feeling of melancholy.  

I know I was not the first person to have this feeling.  I also know I am not the last person that will experience this feeling.  But the shift from my role as someone judging others to that of just me, a man without portfolio, was very visceral.  

Luckily the party was good.  Given the window of 120 minutes for the party I was left with less than two minutes per person to talk and offer t hem thanks for being there.  I know I did not speak to some people and I do feel some guilt.  But, I will make sure I spend some time going forward catching up. 

I know this is more of a journal entry that a blog post.  I promise I will try and do better.

The midwinter day was grey and all traces of light were fleeing.  The earth would be cold when he left the building. Packing out for weeks, he had taken all that was his.  The light crème colored walls had a few screws and nails sticking out breaking the smooth here and there. Still, the space was in the term of a commercial lease, “broom clean”. All that remained was the inside of a vanilla box. No art remained on the walls.  No papers with Post-its demanding action were to be found. No paper clips or pens remained. There were not strings or chains of paper and obligation holding him anymore.. 

As he stood there he remembered the intense moments he had experienced sitting behind his bench, judging the desperate, the unlucky and the evil.  There were times when people did get under his skin.  But the last time that happened was over five years ago. There were times when the personal tragedies he viewed moved him to tears.  The people he had talked to in thirty thousand 20-30 minute meetings had laid open there lives to him. He was tasked with making the right choice.  He knew he made the wrong choice more than once, but he hoped he made the right choice somewhere in the 75% range. 

After today there would be no more tales of Jesus leading the wayward souls home.  After today there would be nobody who was smoking marijuana for anxiety relief.  (There was that one gent whose blood level cannabis, was beyond the charts of the high outliers on several studies he had pulled up.)  After today there would be no sojourns into the back room to listen to people talk about every detail of their lives. 

He wondered how his mind would survive.