The end has come

Sadly, a week ago, Ralph experienced his last day working in the office at Sears.  .  In June Ralph will have worked for Sears for 40 years.    God blessed him richly by giving him plenty of different opportunities during the time that he worked there.  When we were first married, he worked in the Warehouse.  This offered him the opportunity to work evenings and allowed him the time needed to put a new addition on our house.  He worked long days then, tearing down the old house, building up new walls with his brother Ed and making a new home for us.  During the evening, he faithfully went into work and spent 8 hours driving a fork lift machine "picking" orders off the shelves and getting them ready for delivery.  From there he went downtown as a manager at Head Office.  He changed jobs a few times where he eventually landed in the Finance Department.  While it was frustrating to see him work 6 days a week and on vacation, he never complained and was happy to help whenever he was asked.  His experience in the Wharehouse made him an invaluable resource to Sears.

 Little did we know that this job would be his last although Ralph had predicted that this would happen almost 8 years ago.

At the end it was only a small group of people still working.  Seeing a company close their doors for the final time is a sad thing to experience.  I'm thankful that Ralph was able to stay till the end and we both look forward to a new beginning.  We're excited to see what God has planned for us.

This picture was taken on February 8, 2018.  This is the total sum of employees that were still working at Sears.  It's hard to imagine that they used to employ 11,240 employee's in 2017.  If you look closely, you will see Ralph at the very back of the group.

He went downtown this week and met up with a few of his colleagues for lunch and used it as a opportunity to reminisce about the good times that they had.  Ralph is still connected to Sears in the event that they require some data for reporting.  He went home with a computer and all his accesses to the network are still connected.  We commented today that it's been a week already and he hasn't had a call.  It's amazing how fast the time goes although he has managed to keep himself busy working in the house.

We try to get our walks in each day.  In 3 days I had already walked almost 70,000 steps.  I say walk but it's almost a run for me keeping up with him.  He has such a long stride.  Today we reactivated our membership at the gym and plan to visit there on a regular basis as well.  I really enjoy having him home.  I'm amazed at how much we are enjoying our time together.