Retirement rituals: parting (not partying!) with a gift

A retirement gift can make one's exit from working life a needlessly embarrassing memory. If a contest were held for the most idiotic retirement gift, I am convinced that a pillow will make it to the top! Which makes me a winner of sorts. Welcome or feared, retirement is an end to an essential chapter in one's life; undeniably it is a big milestone. With life-long jobs no longer the norm, I am among those increasingly fewer people to experience an official retirement ritual. I get that; I didn't expect an golden watch. I didn't expect anything.











But when the corporate formula decided my time to go into retirement had come, the colleagues with whom I shared almost two decades of good work, good spirit and mutual support, decided on a little something to mark my departure. So, at the beginning of the last team meeting I was a part of, they presented me with a gift. It was a surprise and I was prepared to be moved and grateful, knowing that such gesture was totally on their own initiative and dime. 

The gift was handed in a gift bag showing a pattern of big white snow flakes on a pale green background - hospital shade of green, I thought; there were only slight marks of this bag having been used before but I unwillingly registered the fact. It was the month of May and I could not repress the thought that someone picked this occasion - my once-in-a-lifetime, unique, occasion - to get rid of an unwanted Christmas wrapper. But what was inside? Let me see... a gray travel pillow! Wow!

Was this a "apropos"? I don't recall having had a record of sleeping at my desk. An inside joke? I could not conjure anything to connect that unexpected object and this occasion. An indication as to what I was expected to do in retirement (rest my empty head? start a sleeping spree? or, more generously, travel long distance?) There was also a card, with signatures and even a few kind conventional words from some. I thanked them all and tried to look reasonably pleased (I know I am a bad actor!); mercifully, the meeting agenda was taken over by the business of the day.

It's been two years and I still resent that gift. I tried to re-purpose it: I handed it to my husband with the double purpose of  providing him support on his overnight trans-Atlantic flight, and as a useful prop for the bed-ridden father he was visiting. But the father did not find the object of assistance, so the gray travel pillow fulfilled its destiny by crossing back the Atlantic (in a suitcase). Still having no use for it myself, it was then given to another aching parent, in hopes to alleviate contortions caused by a stubborn back pain. It was found without merit once again and so it landed somewhere out-of-sight. 

But out of my mind? That seems to take some effort. And why do I cling (at least mentally) to this item when I could have donated it or just throw it away? Certainly not for sentimental reasons. I cannot even laugh about the thing. The thought that I wasn't worth of, or inspiring a, more felicitous gift, or that my dear colleagues could be (or became?) that unimaginative, or stingy - is still nagging. Maybe I have done something to deserve this kind of farewell consideration?  

That gray travel pillow not only sullies a moment that should have been memorable in a good way, but added to the difficulty of the transition (it is bad enough when someone is being retired instead of choosing to retire.) I hate the stupid pillow because it calls into question those dear assumptions about what a great bunch we were as people - almost friends; as I am looking back, it has power to cast a lasting shade on my working life; and as time passes, let's face it, there is more to look back at than what awaits forward, so good memories are important.

The golden watch: a classy, if ossified, way to tell someone "Your time is up" or, why not, "Time is precious (use it better from now on!)". But what uplifting parting thoughts can one extract from a gray, possibly re-gifted, travel pillow offered in a reused Christmas bag?


Last updated: 2021 July 13

Photo credit: https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2017/10/25/19/47/piggy-2889048__340.jpg

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