A acquaintance said: "He retired so happily! Every day I drink beer, meet old friends, and don't have to worry about food and clothing." Just a little, he kept sighing. The breath was so long that the U40 servicewoman gave him the nickname "sure-headed, regretful- sighing-as-soon".
He was a construction engineer - a registered civil servant, living intermittently for more than thirty years between construction sites, from high-rise buildings to metro tunnels. The dusty wind, grease, concrete and the weak sounds of the progress days are things he was so familiar with that the feeling of lack of them was unable to sleep. But when he was old, he was forced to stop, like a rusty old crane that had to be retired because it was no longer safe to operate.
On the first day of retirement, he woke up as early as usual, made coffee, wore a uniform, and... sat looking out at the gate. No bells for construction sites. No call to urge progress. No drawings need to be adjusted. He called it a calm shock.
Relatives and friends saw him having free time and invited him to go drinking. He nodded. Going once feels happy, going twice feels intimate, going once for the fifties feels... tired. But it has become a habit, now I don't feel lacking when traveling.
Then one late spring morning, people didn't see him at the beer shop anymore. A week, then two weeks. Until his niece posted a photo of him smiling loudly in the Northwest highlands, holding a hook in her hand, standing among a group of students from a small village growing clean vegetables for the school.
It turned out that he wrapped scarves in the highlands to help volunteers rebuild the kindergarten. No one expected an old man over 60 to have joint pain, back pain, and carry a bag of cement and digging the foundation of a house. But he works with the face of a person who has just found himself in the red dusty layer of the project.
Every night, he sat drinking corn with the villagers, told them about concrete, bridge and culvert and laughed loudly. People say: There are sufferings, because there is no real happiness to do! He chose suffering in true happiness.
