Retirement Day and the trip of Nostalgia

*Long write up. Discretion to skip it is advisable 🤓*

Every month, toward the end of the month, many people nearing retirement visit my office to get my approval signatures for permits to bring their families into the port area for a visit.

Many of them seek approval to bring as many as 35 or even 40 people. It seems as though they want to bring their entire village into this high-security port to show every family member and neighbor where they spent their working life. Their salaries, drawn from their work here, helped them build their homes and support their families.

I always ask each retiree about their length of service with our organization, where their children are now, what they are doing, where they have built their own homes, and their plans for retirement, their second innings 

As I listen to their responses, I often reflect on my own journey and that of my late father, who quietly returned home on his retirement day and went to a temple to offer his thanks to the almighty.

Many of those I grant approval to have served for 35 to 40 years. On rare occasions, I encounter individuals with 42 years or more of service, which means they started working with us before reaching full adulthood. In the past, compensatory employment was available for children of employees who died in workplace accidents.

This entire exchange with retirees takes me down memory lane, and I fondly recall my own past. Sometimes, old songs associated with those memories start playing in my mind, and I find myself singing along.