Rant #3,553: Emotional Rescue

As I have told you in the past, October is absolutely the worst month, at least for myself and my family.

Today is anniversary of an incident that will irk me for the rest of my life--

October 10, 2024 is the fifth anniversary of the day that the company I worked for for nearly a quarter of a century went out of business, leaving its remaining six employees out on our butts with little to show for our years of work and dedication to this company.

I cannot speak for anyone else, but I knew that once the hammer dropped, at least for me, this was the beginning of the end for me as a full-time salaried worker.

Not that I was necessarily old, but in the business world, age 62 might as well as be age 102, because I was, and still am, considered to be unemployable due to my age.

Five years ago today was the beginning of a downward spiral, one which I am just now getting my head out of, but while I knew finding another job would be difficult, I truly had no idea what awaited me.

First of all, in early October 2019, no one on this planet could have any idea about what was just around the corner, meaning the COVID-19 pandemic.

Whether you bought into it lock, stock and barrel or not, it changed this world forever, and as for me, trying to find a new job during late 2019 and into 2020 was the proverbial finding a needle in a haystack, and to this day, no one has found my needle.

I had four interviews during this time, two in person--just before everything shut down--and two over the phone, and that was it.

I also had one supposed interview early on where I was told about five minutes before I left to drive to the company that the interview was canceled, without a reason given, and I have never heard from the company again.

I sent out more than 1,000 resumes from October 2019 to October 2020, and other than these four potential employers and the near potential employer --again, all.of these coming before the pandemic hit--I never heard back from a single employer ... not a one.

Quite simply, I could not get arrested ... and I applied for jobs both in and out of my field--and as you know, I still do--but no one is interested, not t age 62, and certainly not at age 67.

I have certainly been a victim of age-related bias ... but go prove it.

In the midst of all of this, I was immediately denied unemployment due to a glitch in my file with New York State, where a case I filed against the unemployment division 25 years before--and which was officially settled not in my favor--was never formally closed.

So for the first several weeks of my unemployment, I could not get any money coming in, until an enterprising unemployment department executive in the state capitol of Albany listened to me, and put things in motion for that mistake on their part to be taken care of--

I finally received unemployment, a lifeline that kept me solvent during this very difficult time.

Also during this time, I won a judgment against what I call "The McDonald's of Physical Therapy," where I was grossly overcharged, and taken advantage of, when I used them for physical therapy a few months prior.

In both cases, I was minutes away from getting a lawyer and suing, but happily, neither case got that far.

And yes, many other things happened to myself and my family, of varying degrees, to make 2020 about the worst year of my life.

My father passed away, and dementia began its three-year path to take my mom away from us.

My son also lost his job, doing so during the pandemic, so during 2020, the only person working in my household was my wife.

I was working in a different way--trying to find work each and every day and keeping an eye on my parents and for that matter, my son.

The only good thing that happened during the year is that right before I was to lose my unemployment, I got the job I have now, as a remote editor/writer, and the only reason I got it was because certain people with this Washington, D.C.-based trade organization knew my work from my previous 23 and a half years, and I fit exactly what they needed.

My son was later rehired by his former company--at my urging--and that was also a good thing.

2020 turned into 2021 and then 2022 and then 2023, but things were really spiraling into the abyss.

My nine-year-old car died in the middle of the street in June 2023, and this was an omen of things to come ... none of which were very good.

My mother's health had worsened, and she ended up going into a coma when I was on a cruise with my family and other family members.

It was impossible to get home from where we were, so I stuck it out, counting the hours until I was able to get home when the cruise ended.

She somehow managed to hold out, and passed away just a few days after I arrived home.

Her death, as painstaking as it was, dovetailed into a mess that only subsided early this year.

We put our house--my home of 50 years--onto the market, because the Town of Oyster Bay caught wind of my mother's passing, and with her out of the picture, it wasn't a legal mother/daughter house anymore--

And thus, we were breaking the law by living there.

We got the best price we could on the house, but due to situations beyond my or my sister's control, the two of us received little from the sale.

In the meantime, we thought the town meant business, so we literally cleaned out the house top to bottom, and my wife and I found a small apartment nearby to set up shop again.

It is nice, but it is about 30 leaps down from residing in a house.

(Little did we know that the town lost our paperwork, and we could have stayed in the house longer than we did, as there ended up being no rush to vacate, as the buyer also dragged his feet, too.)

We finally sold the house early this year, and it is still hard to believe that we don't live there anymore.

But the evil forces were not yet done with us, not by a long shot.

Bringing a bag of garbage down the house's stairway, I somehow--I still can't figure it out--missed stepping on the next-to-last stair of the stairway, and my left knee T-boned a box of photo albums that we were in the process of moving.

My leg buckled, I was rushed to the hospital, and eventually, they found that i had a torn quad muscle in my left leg.

Surgery ensued, and I was bed-bound for months, and could not help my wife and son at all when we moved into our new dwelling.

But it was only the beginning ...

In the new dwelling, I somehow got to a closet door, opened it, and the contents of the closet fell directly on me, tearing my quad for the second time in a month.

Another surgery ensued, and while I was even more bed-bound than before, I soon began a 10-month program of physical therapy, which ends today.

But in the meantime, I went through mental things related to my situation that no one could ever foresee.

I always knew I would get better; that wasn't the problem.

I could not sleep, and being almost entirely bed-bound made my sleep in my own bed impossible, so whatever sleep I got was on the living room sofa.

Through a lot of determination--and a lot of help from others--I overcame that, and once I was able to drive my car again after a six-month hiatus, just about everything returned to normal with myself and my family.

Things are better now, but quite frankly, they will never be the same.

When you are forced to retire rather than to make that choice on your own, nothing can be what it once was.

I don't like being forcibly retired, and I don't like that no employer would take a chance on me, presumably due to my age.

Again, go prove it.

And going back to October 10, 2019, I have spoken to a few of my former fellow employees, and it seems that nothing came easy for any of us 

We all had difficult times finding work--our ages ranged from the mid-40s to the 60s--and if we did eventually find a job, none of us are getting paid what we were making five years ago.

In fact, one person only got a job because I vouched for her, portraying myself as her supervisor during the hiring pricess when I was only her co-worker in a different department.

That is what people do when they are desperate for work, as the six of us were, and probably, still are.

I could help her, but no one--not any of my fellow co-workers, other former co-workers, contacts, others--no one could help me ... but at least I could help someone else.

So here I am, five years later.

Things have started to get back to normal, but I don't think it will ever get back to normal for me.

Sorry for the length of today's Rant--i know it is a bit long-winded--but unless you have walked in my shoes, you have absolutely no idea, none at all, about what has gone on since October 10, 2019, and how it has affected myself and my family.

Five years is a longer time than you might think it is ... on the other hand, it hasn't been quite enough time for me to fully heal from my wounds, both figuratively and literally, and also mentally.

But I do believe that I am up to the task, and continue to work each and every day to make sure that whatever demons I have don't come back--

EVER.