Ramblings of Frettings

Dad just sits and cries. We're not really sure why. One moment everything was fine and then the next it was as if he'd seen something in the coals of the fire.

We had never known him to display much in the way of emotion. He was always so focused on his work. The stereotypical stoic image at whatever project captured his focus.

It's probably the stress of retirement and the ailings of his aging parents. Being front seat to the onset of age-related degenerative conditions can be intense. To watch a fully functional person be reduced to incapability by things even as simple as a packet of take-out soy sauce can keep you up with grief and worry for days.

I'm beginning to think that engineers just don't know how to retire. It's a whole mindset built around the idea of solvability of problems and the perspective of being needed by one's relations for that function. To put it in an analogy it's like living a life as a clamp only to find that there is no need for clamps. That's a horrible analogy, lol.