Alone

Bill: My family wants me to move back home to Minnesota.

Me: Wasn’t that always your post-retirement plan?

Bill, who is very old: Yes, but they want me to do it like, this week. I won’t, obviously… I don’t retire until the end of this year.

Me: Will you move back then?

Bill: Maybe not the way they’re acting.

Me: Go on

Bill, sighing: I have this new nephew. His name is Henry. It’s a real old-fashioned name. Newborn baby, new addition to the family… had to find out on facebook. Nobody called, nobody texted.

Bill: They don’t answer when I call. They never text me back. But they always say they want me to move back there.

Bill: But what would I do? Sit at home, watching TV during brutally cold winters, never leaving the house?

Bill: Never meet anybody, never help anybody? That’s just being dead. I don’t want that. Covid lockdown was the worst time of my life!

Me: So, what will you do?

Bill: I don’t know. I think I’m just gonna be an old man who dies alone. And it’s all my fault.

Me: What makes you say that?

Bill: It’s all the overtime. I spent decades right here in this building, instead of going out and existing in the world, maybe finding companionship.

Bill: For thirty years, everything I did I did for the library. There was nothing else.

Me: You know, I can actually relate to that a little. You may remember, right up until Covid I was working 44-52 hour weeks every single week.

Bill: Oh yeah, I remember. I only ever saw you working overtime.

Me: Well then lockdown happened, and… not working all those extra hours all of a sudden made me realize how miserable I was.

Me: I couldn’t go back to that life now if I wanted to.

Bill: You’re lucky you got to realize that.

Me: Yeah. I really am.

Bill: There’s hope for you, yet.