Quintessence

It started with Walter. It’s been some years back. He would tell me all the time “ Heike, I got three years and then I am fully vested”. He was referring to the pension plan by our employer. Now, even after those three years would have passed, he still would have been nowhere near his legal retirement age. I was sort of confused about that. But what really stuck out was the fact that he dragged himself begrudgingly to a job that obviously had already worn him to the bone. And then he received his diagnosis. Colorectal cancer. He went on medical leave, lost a shit load of weight and never returned to work. I think he was dead within six months of his diagnosis. He never made it to his full vestment.

Then some years later, I moved on. Different state. Different employer. Same job. Same shit. The gentle signs of the Universe trying to stop me from paddling upstream all my life and allow the reason for my existence to take me where I belong hadn’t quite had their effect on me yet. This patient came through our emergency room. All the way from Canada. On his way to get on a cruise he chartered. As I was taking care of him his words struck me, ringing the bell of my consciousness in such a way that its reverberation still sounds in my soul. He said “ All I ever did was work, work, work, and then come home and bitch, bitch, bitch”. He told me he was estranged from his grown sons, and his ex-wife was here with him to accompany him on the cruise. After thirty-three years of marriage, thirty-three years of coming home and bitching and despite the divorce, she decided to be by his side after he received his diagnosis of kidney cancer. Even a layman could see death on his face. We were giving him blood transfusions so he would be able to make the cruise.

Now there is my ex-mother-in-law. Same story. Just with her personal spin on it. Working away, despising what she was doing just to ride it out to retirement so she didn’t have to do what she hated to get up and do. Within two years of her retirement she is so pleasantly confused that she can’t live independently, let alone enjoy her retirement. All the things she used to worry about so much every day are now not on her mind because of her dementia. It’s an odd thing to watch. Because I remember all the things she would get on me about and now they are essentially non-existent in her mind.

I am surrounded by people who despise what they do. Getting up everyday just to repeat the same day over. Living the same day until death. Sort of reminds me of the movie “Groundhog Day”. I had to go through mind-breaking challenges to come to my point of acceptance that I was no different. Yes, I still clock for work. I still am earning my living in a profession I do not want to retire from. But I have made tremendous changes to be able to wake up every day with such a joy in my heart that I have another day to do things I choose. Things I enjoy doing. It’s been a slow transition and I am sure I will be in transition for the rest of my life. And I am fine with that. I rather go through changes and challenges than to live the same day in repetition by drowning out what my soul calls me to do.