In my refrigerator

I opened my refrigerator this morning and winced with the realization that not a drop of milk remained. Not a glass of juice was in the bottle. The meat drawer, empty. The vegetables in that drawer had rotted; the fruit in the fruit drawer was moldy and brown. Nothing, I realized, running on empty. I had seen this day coming for years.

It all started when the company announced a new satellite would be started in Bangalore, India. I began to look around my life and realize that it would soon be coming to an end. During these years, when our job descriptions took on more and more of a "train our colleagues in Bangalore" flavor to them, I looked at my car, knowing that I would soon be unable to afford it. I looked at the restaurants I frequented, knowing that their staff would forget about me soon enough. I looked at my friends, knowing that I would soon have to decline their invitations to charitable fundraisers and expensive restaurants. I looked at my in-laws, knowing that I would have to avoid their inevitable invitations to go to Europe and the Caribbean. And I looked at my neighbors, hoping that, above all, I would be spared the stench of a foreclosure, the embarrassment of being delinquent in my condominium assessments. The shame of having my name posted on the bulletin board in the lobby.

Despite all this, I remained unable to act, incapable of figuring out another job or career. Despite the slow drain of jobs to Bangalore, the trickle-by-trickle 5 to 10 percent layoffs that happened at our home company, I refused to take action. I witnessed my life from the outside and procrastinated. And then it happened, all of a sudden and entirely unexpected: the mass layoff six months ago. Now here I am, a 50-year old unemployed man with a wife who now works at Bad Breath and Beyond, two teenage children, wondering how to pay for college, a retirement savings of $89,000, and a liquid savings of $2,500. And a fixed monthly budget of $4,500.

The end will come soon enough. The empty refrigerator is only the latest in the sequence of indignities as I march inevitably to my demise. Still, I cannot bring myself to look for another job.