What will I do the rest of my life?

I never imagined that I would feel a certain discomfort with retirement.  While I was working, I squirreled away any number of books, movie and TV disks, and music CDs to last at least a couple of retirements.  But then, for mostly economic reasons, I kept working long past the time most Americans stopped toiling and smelled the roses.  My only reason for no longer working for IBM was because they decided, for mostly economic reasons, to terminate the two of us on the Global Sales Manual team and the ten on the Announcement Letter team with whom we often worked.  So it was that at 73, I was retired.  I eventually was able to collect a few months of unemployment insurance.  I even applied for a part-time community college teaching job which I would have gladly taken and enjoyed.   

But I was not even given an interview.  Was that because they could tell from my extensive resume that I was highly qualified, perhaps too qualified, and excessively experienced, possibly far more qualified and experienced than any of the full-time instructors they had on staff? 

One thing regarding educators.  Many have very fragile egos.  Others have wildly inflated opinions of themselves.  No matter the reason, they don't like competition.  I have also had experience in the military and the private sector, as well as over a decade of teaching at the college level, in addition to having graduated from a secondary teaching certification program.  In addition, I had published the ten RAoF novels.  On paper, and likely in the minds of those who would make the selection, I must have looked fairly formidable, perhaps too formidable for them.  So, it was likely way too easy to simply state in the rejection email, "We cannot offer you an interview at this time."  No explanation required.  Was it my advanced age?  Was it my too-overt life experiences and abilities?  Was it because I am a military veteran?  Was it because they might have realized I was gay? 

Had they even thought about what I might have brought to the students I would have taught, my diverse background might have been invaluable to those very students?     

I have had to face it.  This society does not value the elderly.  And, in some cases, for good reasons:  Alzheimer's disease, dementia, moribund beliefs and prejudices, veneration of a past by those who are older, a past that was nowhere near perfect, in addition to the inevitable physical decline along with the mental decline.    

IBM had no problem with my age or the ages of any of the others on the Sales Manual and Announcement Letter teams.  They had a problem with our collective incomes.  They did not want to pay us any longer, no matter how good we were at our jobs since I, and a few of the others, had worked for IBM for over three decades each.  We enjoyed our jobs and were very good at them.  That was not enough.

I have had to accept the fact that unless I want to be a greeter at Wal-Mart or some other job that would tax me way too severely, my working days are done.  

So what next?  

How long do I likely have to live?

My mother died at 80, a couple of weeks before her 81st birthday.  She had had Rheumatic fever as a teenager, damaging her heart.  She later had two separate open heart surgeries, one in her 50's and one in her 70's, to replace heart valves.  Had she not been sick way back when she was a teenager, who knows how many more years she might have lived instead of dying of congestive heart failure?  Another surgery might have given her a longer life, but she likely would not have survived the operation.  Her mother had died at 86 of a heart attack.  Her father at 55 of a heart attack.  Her brother Robert died of a heart attack.  Her sister Doris died of a massive heart attack.  Whose genes did I get?  (Mom's sister Jean, two years younger, lived to be 94.)  

My father died at 81, a few months shy of his 82nd birthday.  Other than being a bombardier in WWII, bailing out of their crippled B-24 Liberator and becoming a POW of the Germans for many months, he really had had no significant illnesses in his life.  But several months into his 81st year, his body began to break down.  The doctor I spoke with said that from the tips of his toes to the top of his head, everything about him was failing.  When I saw him in the emergency room, I did not recognize him.  You could see through his skin.  His body was shrunken and depleted.  He looked like a survivor of a Nazi death camp.  His genes had turned on him.  His mother had died at 77, her body simply betraying her.  His father had lived to be 94, but his kidneys especially were failing him.  His body simply gave out.  Whose genes did I get?

Someday soon, AI will likely be able to tell us each how long we can expect to live, unless some unpredictable and deadly weather phenomenon, earthquake or accident carries us off first.  But at the moment, I have no way of knowing.

What Have I Been Doing?

I finished two biographies of The Beatles, an autobiography of Barbra Streisand, and volume one of Cher's autobiography.  I finished re-reading all ten of Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City series.  I finished a thick picture book on the 100 years of Warner Brothers pictures.  I have started a five-volume biography of FDR.   

Many days I either listen to music from several eras (I have nearly 5K CDs in my collection), or I watch new television series from streaming services.  (With Spectrum adding Disney+, HBO Max, Peacock and Paramount +, I have plenty to watch, not counting the many Blu-ray and 4K disks I bought, most before I retired.  I also watch Rams, Dodgers or Lakers games from Spectrum.  So I do have a lot of stuff to take up my time each day, not counting household chores when Mark is at work.   

Survivor's Guilt?

So many cultural or political icons have died in recent years, certainly family and even friends and acquaintances.  I wonder what it is that keeps me hanging around?  Is each one of us here to fulfill a mission, to complete a significant task?  

I managed to survive childbirth and childhood diseases such as polio from 1949 onward.  The Cold War.  The Vietnam War.  AIDS.  COVID.  Car and plane accidents.  It's way too easy in the modern era to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, on the wrong road or highway, in the wrong aircraft, in the wrong building.  Others go off the rails so frequently, armed and out of control, and the jeopardize those around them.     

Am I just hanging on for little reason?  Like those with one-time talent who make no more TV shows or movies, sing no more songs, write no more articles or books?  They die at such an advanced age that fewer and fewer even remember who they were.  I wrote years of journals, the three volumes of poetry, my unpublished autobiography, then several abortive novels, the RAoF series whom few have ever read, especially all of the way through, and finally this blog.    

Those are just accomplishments, no matter how minor or profound.  

Relationships?  The family is, as I have said, mostly gone.  The friends and acquaintances over the years are mostly gone.  We grew apart, lost touch, broke up, moved away, they died:  Dave Moore, Daylin Butler, Patrick Byrne, Bart Keeling, Barbara Kinslow, Chuck Gover, Ramsey Hammond, Gary Kinateder, Dick Tuttle, Dan Stratford, Dino Gagliasso, Rob McDonald, Willy Benitez, Kent Thomas, Steve Schurr, Chris Keener, Roger Benninger.