I listened to my own replacement being trained

Dear Delyara, My company laid me off after twenty-six years. They called it restructuring and gave me six weeks to train the person taking over most of my work for less money. Today, I sat beside him while he learned the system I helped design. He is twenty-four, polite, frightened, and completely innocent in this. That almost makes it harder. He asked why certain reports are named after my initials. I said it was an old convention. I did not explain that I built them during nights when my children were small and I logged back in after bedtime. At lunch, colleagues avoided my desk because nobody knows how to behave around someone whose future has been announced. My replacement asked whether I had any advice. I told him to document everything and never assume loyalty would protect him. He looked embarrassed. I apologised. On the train home, I opened a job website and saw roles asking for “digital natives” and “high-energy self-starters.” I am fifty-eight. I have energy. It is simply carrying grief, a mortgage, and the humiliation of teaching a stranger how to erase me efficiently.