Ain't dead yet...

With friend and teaching partner,
Dr. Courtney Shah, at my final
commencement as a faculty member,
June 22, 2014

For the first time in some 45 years, I am no longer working.

June 23 was the first day of my unofficial—but permanent—retirement from a coveted position as a tenured instructor of English at a community college in Washington.

Technically, I am on medical leave, due to increasing disability from multiple sclerosis, until that runs out early next year. But for all intents and purposes, I will not be returning to my job. This coming Thursday, I will head into the local Social Security office to apply for disability.

I had hoped to make it to 62, to continue contributing to my retirement plan, to continue feathering my financial nest to provide for a more comfortable, post-working life. My body had other plans, however. At the tender age of 55, I am done.

As my colleagues returned to work last Monday, catching up after the long summer break while rushing to print syllabi and lesson plans for the first week of school, I was alone, missing both them and the frenzy, and wondering what to do now.

I have always worked, from the time I was about 10 and picking strawberries, a rite of passage for Baby Boomers who grew up in Oregon's fertile Willamette Valley.  I had my own yard work business when I was 13 while most of my peers were at summer camp or home watching TV. Throughout high school, I had an after-school job as a box girl and then checker at the Safeway down the hill from my childhood home.

I paid for much of my college education from my summer wages at Salem fruit canneries processing the berries I once used to pick. Post-college jobs included newspaper reporter, small business co-owner, free-lance writer, and instructor of English at two community colleges.

Now instead of rushing off to class, I am alone in a quiet house in an even quieter neighborhood on the shores of South Puget Sound. 

And I am left wondering can and will I work again. I still have all the mental skills and knowledge gained over four and a half decades, supplemented by the wisdom that comes to virtually all who make it to middle age. I am not ready to be put out to pasture.

The question is, how can I put those skills to use with a body that increasingly feels like a prison.

With dear friend Cindy Miller in the Astoria bike shop

 I co-founded

I know I am not alone; we are legion, those of us with disabilities and a lifetime’s worth of skills and knowledge.  We are not ready to be put out to pasture.

I know that many would envy my early "retirement." But I want to work, I want to contribute in a meaningful way, in spite of my disability--or maybe because of it.

Then there is the economic reality.  I am grateful that I likely will have the disability-benefits parachute—and I say "likely" because qualifying for the benefits is never a foregone conclusion, even for someone in my condition. But assuming I do get them, the benefits will amount to less than half my former take-home pay. Needless to say, I also will likely not be able to contribute to my retirement anymore, a financial double-whammy.

No, I am not ready to be put out to pasture.

So I sit. And wonder. And hope.

Update: On Oct. 11, just a little over two weeks after my appointment with Social Security, I received notification that I had been approved for disability. My payments will begin in January, but I still won’t be eligible for Medicare until January 2017. Nonetheless, I am relieved, to say the least, and glad that I won't have to go through the appeals process, as many applicants do. I guess that’s a silver lining to having an obvious and well-recognized disability.