Congratulations? Bon voyage?

I love my family above all else but have weirdly always put my job first. No matter how dire my domestic circumstances, for nigh on 45 years I’ve dragged myself to work. When I was slogging through a brutal regimen of surgery-chemotherapy-radiation, a substitute was hired to fill in for me on days I was too sick to come in—but the sub was never needed. A senior colleague rebuked me for that extreme work ethic: “You don’t have to be Ms. Cancer Super Star, you know.”

I’ve had many jobs at Time magazine—proofreading, reporting, writing—but toward the end of my career, I asked to be reassigned to the copy desk so I could have a regular schedule and spend less time traveling. The regularity helped, but it’s been a while since I looked forward to going to work. 

My current job is not difficult, and since I turned 67, I’ve worked just a day or two a week, but understaffing has made it stressful. So at the end of a close, I’ve felt no sense of accomplishment—but a big sense of shame about the whinging, whimpering way I worked. And though my colleagues are bright, upright and kind, I’m decades older than nearly all of them, and I loom like a memento mori over the newsroom.

For a year at least, I’ve been mulling over how to quit. Trouble was, I was afraid the whole enterprise would collapse without me. My shrink would call this grandiosity, the false belief that I’m more essential than I am. But in my case, it’s born not of arrogance or self-importance but fear of failure—the sense that if I make a mistake or go missing, my ineptitude will cause the ship to go down, and god knows I’m inept (if never, ever absent).

But recently, a memory catapulted me into decisiveness. Several years ago, I worked full time at the butt end of the week, sharing the workflow on Saturdays with a sweet-tempered octogenarian named Olive, who had another job Mondays through Fridays at Reader’s Digest. I remember only a few things about Ollie. One was that she always wore a proper dress and high heels, while the rest of us slopped around in jeans and sneakers. Another was that her handwriting was so flawless that it was used in the first Gregg Shorthand manual. And finally, her three dearest family members, the constants of her conversation, were all named Roderick. There was her deceased husband Roddy Senior, her son Roddy Junior, and her grandson Little Roddy. If it was a slow day, she would come into my office and chat, and I would flounder helplessly trying to follow the intertwined tales of the Roddys.

Then one Saturday, after a chat, she returned to her own office—and never came out again. A co-worker who was sent to track down some copy knocked on her door, looked in, saw her lying on the floor, and assumed she was resting. A few minutes later, she went back to try again—and realized Ollie was dead. 

While it is true that, as OIlie’s obituary said, she died among friends, it is also true that she died at work, which seems somehow depressing—that at 86, and literally and figuratively well heeled, she chose to spend her Saturdays shuffling (shoveling?) other people’s paper rather than pursuing some grander ambition. And I vowed that would never be me. 

So thank you, Ollie, for your cautionary example. At 71, I’ve finally told the copy chief that I’m putting my pens away, shelving my reference books, closing my laptop, and calling it a day—come hell or high water.

But imagine my surprise when after I told the copy chief I’d be leaving, she did not burst into tears and plead with me to stay but instead congratulated me! And far from sinking the ship, my departure enabled her to invite a longtime freelancer to come aboard full-time.

So in less than two weeks, I’ll be hoisting my sails and setting off—for, well, nowhere. After all, I live in the real world. And in the real world, a pox is closing all the ports of entry. And anyway, decisiveness was never my strong suit. It was hard enough to leave. It’s too much to expect that I would have chosen a destination.