The much-esteemed mailman Ken, who has served our neighborhood for thirty years, is retiring soon. He can’t just disappear. He needs to train replacements so we won’t suffer too much when he retires. His decency has compelled him to train some new hires, and he seems to be cherry-picking his replacement based on their performance. With several candidates auditioning for his role, Ken’s presence is no longer as consistent as it used to be. His replacements fill in more and more.
Ken and I used to have long discussions, mostly about sports. He knows I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area during Joe Montana’s glory years and that my favorite athletes of all time are Bo Jackson and Michael Jordan. But we’ve barely talked during the last two years, ever since Ken’s retirement became a topic of discussion. We’re preparing for his disappearance in advance. We’re getting used to not talking to each other because that will become the permanent state of affairs. Ken’s retirement points to the human need to prepare for an uncoupling, the inevitable severance between one person and another in a work situation, friendship, or romance.
This preparation period also extends to those familiar voices we grow to love on the radio. Take my favorite local NPR station, LAist 89.3. The legendary Larry Mantle will eventually retire. No one knows exactly when. He’s sixty-seven, and I hope he sticks around for another decade, but that could be wishful thinking. He’s so beloved that his abrupt disappearance would shock LAist listeners, who might resent any replacement. Therefore, his heir apparent, Austin Cross, occasionally takes Mantle’s place. Like Ken’s replacements, Cross gives us an opportunity to acclimate to a new presence. Should he eventually inherit Mantle’s throne, listeners may accept the transition more readily. The point is that we need a preliminary period to adjust to the end of an era before the ending arrives.
The same adjustment period can occur when a friendship is coming to an end. Imagine a friend announcing that she’s moving in three months for a new job or to attend graduate school. You find yourself cutting off communication almost immediately, as though the uncoupling needs to begin at once. You could maintain the friendship for those remaining three months, but one or both of you would rather get it over with. Rip the Band-Aid off the cut, so to speak, and move on. Get the uncoupling over with, for God’s sake.
Then there’s the workplace. I’ve been teaching college writing since 1987, almost forty years, including thirty years at the same college. I know I’m retiring from that college in six months. The period of uncoupling has already begun. I react to memos about workshops, ceremonies, and team-building exercises with unprecedented indifference. While I continue preparing for my classroom presentations out of pride and professionalism, I’d be dishonest if I didn’t admit to an emotional detachment I never felt before. When I walk through the college corridors, the architecture, the desks, the offices, and the mailroom no longer look real. They resemble representations in a dream. I’m clearly going through an uncoupling with my place of work.
I can’t talk about uncoupling without talking about life itself, now that I’m sixty-five. It strikes me as crass and nihilistic to look at the end of your life and declare that you’re approaching closing time. But I think of my job as a bouncer at Maverick’s Disco in the late 70s. During the last half hour before we closed at 1 a.m., I’d empty the ashtrays, disinfect the faux-wood tabletops, and turn the chairs upside down on the tables. I discouraged patrons from dancing or buying anything from the snack bar. “We’re wrapping things up,” I’d tell them.
The clock is approaching 1 a.m. I have some precious life left, but I need to be honest. I feel that impulse to clean the tabletops, put the chairs away, and tell myself, “It’s time to wrap things up.” There’s so much I love about life. There’s so much I’m grateful for. There are so many people I love dearly and cannot bear the thought of parting from.
But I’m sixty-five, and I find that it’s 12:30 at the disco. I have no easy answer to the conflict inside me: the powerful impulse to cling to this life I love and the equally powerful impulse I felt as a disco bouncer to “clean up the joint” before closing time.
I can hear my father, a military man, telling me, “Get your affairs in order, son, and follow protocol.”
That word, protocol. At sixty-five, I’d like to know just what this protocol is.
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