‘Another week closer to the pension.’

On every Friday afternoon at five

Old ‘Grandad’ in the office would say that.

At first we were shocked, in our boyish ways;

It seemed to us that he had given up.

What he said was, of course, completely true,

And applied to all without exception,

But he was getting near to the finish,

Which made the countdown to the line more real,

While we had barely left the starting blocks.

Such notions were a forest, unexplored.

One Monday morning, he did not appear,

And soon we were informed he’d passed away.

Just ten weeks short of sixty-five, they said.

It did not help. Close, but not close enough.