I was woken at 4:42am by a phone that was not ringing.
That is one of the stranger things retirement can do. It removes the work, but the body keeps answering the old calls.
For years, the early call meant something had gone wrong. Someone needed a decision. Someone needed judgement. Someone had decided, correctly or otherwise, that the answer might be in my head.
I resented those calls.
Then they stopped.
There is peace in that. The dread goes quiet. The old hum of something being about to go wrong finally lowers itself.
But the summons goes too.
And that is harder to talk about. Nobody wants to admit missing an interruption they spent years complaining about. Nobody wants to sound ungrateful for peace.
Still, some losses arrive disguised as relief.
The full essay is on Substack:
https://theoldgreythinker.substack.com/p/the-442am-phone-call
This piece began on The Old Grey Thinker.
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