Dear Daddy, What Now?

Dear Daddy,

I know it’s been nearly 23 years since you left this planet, but I have never stopped missing you, and I continue to need your advice.  Maybe I need your advice now more than I ever did while you were still around.  I was only 34 when you left, and I had thought I was getting things figured out.

What do I do now?  How long do I wait for my new life to happen?  In what direction should I be looking?

I’m aware that you too lost your livelihood of choice before you were ready or able to stop working to support yourself and Mom.  I’m sure that a television repair shop seemed like a great business model back in 1956 or whenever you and Stan started Lucas & Siegel TV Repair.  After all, you two had done your apprenticeships at Hollander & Co., and did pretty well know your collective way around the electronics of the day.

In your case, I’m sure it was really scary to marry off both your daughters in the same year as your business was no longer profitable and you and your (then) three partners were considering your options in what must have seemed like a bleak economy in 1987.

I remember you going through every variety of odd job trying to find something with health coverage for yourself and your unemployed bipolar wife.  I know it was a terrible struggle.  I wish I had paid more attention.

I do know that you landed on your feet, so to speak, when you went to work for the state senator for four years – long enough to get state health coverage for you and Mom – and enjoyed working as his personal assistant.  That job seemed tailor made for you, and yet, I know it was not without its difficulties.  Being 60 and having to start a new career is not for sissies.  Hell, from what I’ve seen in others, being 60 is not for sissies.

You were such a good man to give up that job to someone else who needed it more.  I remember the senator’s next assistant being thankful and keeping in touch with you right up until your last breath at age 67.

All my life I’ve tried to do “the right thing” in every situation with which I’m presented.  I try to follow your example and the footsteps in which you and Mom carefully raised me.  But I’m at one of those crossroads now where I simply don’t know where to turn or what else to try.

I did what you told me – “get a good education, get a good job with health insurance, be able to support yourself for life so you don’t have to depend on others” – for as long as I could.  I know that life’s not fair, but for some reason I thought I could keep on doing like I had been until retirement age.  I kept my dealings with other people honest, and didn’t stab backs.  I had a great reputation as a better-than-average employee everywhere I worked until 2008.

I guess I wasn’t watching the signs closely enough about what was going to happen to the economy and my own nearly-obsolete skill set.  I guess I just wasn’t paying attention and I missed a lot of red flags.

I remember more than one of your lectures to me as a child ending with you screaming “you’re missing the point, Mary Rose!” Well, I feel like I’m missing it now.

Maybe I did successfully help raise two sons.  I mean, after all, they have both landed in what seems to be the promised land of health, wealth, and happiness.  I can’t bemoan the fact that they’re “too far away” because it’s the job of parents to launch their babies from the nest.

While it’s true that I never exactly promised my beloved husband, Stu, that I would support him in the style to which we had become accustomed, I actually cringe at the way we have to live now and what little he is able to enjoy in what should be his golden years.

I so wish you and Stu could have gotten to know each other as fellow human beings.  You’re so much alike.  He actually has now outlived you, as of about February of this year.  I am all too aware that every moment matters with someone you love, and I know that life is temporary.

So what is a washed-up old former mainframe programmer, who’s so afraid of trusting most other people that she can count her actual friends on one hand, supposed to do now?

I’m crying as I type this letter to someone who is no longer living.  I just don’t know what to try next.  No one wants to hire a 57-year-old woman who “used to be” something but hasn’t done anything for them recently.  No agency wants to pay for me to go back to school.

I’m so frustrated by the fact that I know my mind is sharp as any chef’s knife, but my body is falling apart.  And I’m slowly dying inside every day at my current underpaid job, where I sit at a desk and keep track of data, creating reports that no one ever looks at until something goes wrong.

And here it is, another holiday.  Stu and I have no family in town and no friends for any get-togethers.  I sit here and listen to the occasional firecracker being shot off, the occasional kids yelling, the birds singing, through the open window.

Yes, I’m grateful for the weather.  It changes every few hours in this town, so I guess I should just learn to love diversity, be more flexible, all that stuff.

Daddy, please help.  I need a job that deserves me.  I need a reason to WANT to get out of bed in the morning.  I need some social activity.  I need to feel like I belong on this planet.

Please note that, just like when you were alive, I’m still a needy little kid that never asks what YOU want, just what I want.  I’m sure I was one big “gimme” monster growing up with endless questions.  

Sadly, the monster is still in here.  But now, I’m not only asking you for something specific with an easy answer from you, even if it was "no". I’m asking you to show me what I want and how to get it.

Aren’t you glad you’re not here anymore?  Selfishly, I will never stop missing you.

Your Loving Child,

Mary Rose