What Has Been Going On

It is finals week here at RIT and that means that I finally get some breathing room to write something substantial on this here blog. So here goes...

My father lost his job.

This could not come at a more inconvient nor worse time. My father had been having problems at work for quite some time but my parents kept the true gravity of the issues he was dealing from my brother and I, so we had no idea about what was actually going on. Basically, my father ran a branch of a bank based in Western Wisconsin. He came to the job with a lot of experience, knowledge and business connections. And smarts. Lots of smarts. His bosses turned out to be narrow minded and couldn't handle the fact that he was smarter than them. (This is how the situation was explained to me). So they looked for an excuse to get rid of my father. My dad's expertise is in coporate finance and loans, and after one loan went bad (which was not his fault) he was told that if he made another mistake he would be fired. So time goes by. A family friend comes to my father for a loan. This was a man my father thought he could trust. A man whose work as a contractor had seen our family through remodels and minor repairs. This man did not hold up his end of the deal and my father was held responsible. So, instead of being fired, my father quit.

This is what hurts my heart: my father is 60 years old. He was 1.5 years away from retirement. Now he has to start over again. My father's plans for his retirement included teaching at the University but that job isn't open to him untill he is 62 and fully retired. While severance pay and benefits are going to last my parents untill August, I hate to see them have to go through this level of stress. They keep telling me that it is going to be ok and everything is going to work out. But I can't stop from worrying anyway. That they have to put into motion their plans for retirement sooner than they expected. It hurts.

I am so angry at the men who did this. My father is a good, honest man and he didn't deserve this. I cannot be so far away from my parents and not know what is going on. This is truly unfair to them, to people that did nothing to have this burden put upon them.