It was a lot easier to live and work when I wasn’t alone. My wife and daughter were there, and somehow the heaviness after a day at work evaporated over family dinners. Now that my wife is gone and my daughter has her own life, I feel infirm and perpetually ill. My bones ache, it’s hard to walk, people at work keep hinting that I should retire, and I’m scared. If I leave now, the pension will be small, I will not be able to put aside to rebuild a summer house or a comfortable life. And the god with them with the trips somewhere or buy new furniture, but I would like to finish the house.
To finally make sure that I can leave my job, I told my daughter that I was thinking about retirement. She immediately rejoiced, as if it was the best news I had heard in days.
– Daddy, finally! You’ve been working all your life, and now you deserve a vacation. You can stay in the summer house longer, even if you want to spend the winter there, Mark and I will buy a good boiler and visit more often.
– What about the money? You can’t buy building materials with your pension…
– Forget about money. Mark and I are both working, can’t we help you? Don’t worry about anything at all, we’ll help you with medicines and food. You can resign with peace of mind.
That’s kind of what I was counting on. I was building a house not for myself, but for the future of my children and grandchildren, and I could somehow manage food and medicine on my own.
I lived in sweet ignorance and good mood for about two months, not realizing that my son-in-law quietly hated me for the fact that I quit. He was stingy in investing money in the family, and then my daughter began to ask for a little money on my card or give me his. Mark kept quiet, but at the birthday party, he told me everything. How parents should not become a burden to their children and how insolent I am for asking them for money twice a month, even though I never asked for it myself.
It was very unpleasant. My daughter tried to comfort me by telling me Mark had said too much because he wasn’t doing well at work, but I knew he’d said what he was thinking. And it’s true, he’s got a family, parents of his own to help, and here I am with my pension… On the one hand, I deserve to help my daughter, but since it’s interfering with her happiness, maybe I should go back to work until I can finish with the house. Then I have enough for everything, but while construction is going on, I’ll have to find the money for it myself.
