When did I become useless?

I will turn 64 on my next birthday, just 2 weeks away.  As is required, I have given plenty of notice that I shall retire from full-time employment on my 66th birthday, in two years from now. There are but 6 weeks remaining in my current administrative position. In July, I shall return to my responsibilities as an Associate Professor of Digital Humanities and Communication Studies.

Since I arrived at Brock in August of 1980, fresh Ph.D. in hand, I have served the students of the university, and the university itself.

So when did I become superfluous to the Academy?  At what point did "senior colleague" tip over into "senior citizen," with its attendant cultural associations of over the hill, past prime, slow, helpless, in the way, a bother -- useless to my department and to my colleagues?

The signs have been creeping in all around me.  But it wasn't until I was talking to other senior colleagues did those individual signs start to fall into place and I began to see an unpleasant picture of my Grove, my Academe.

"I feel irrelevant in my own department" was the declaration of a colleague that resonated with frightening clarity within my being.  It was spoken by a man whom I respect as an academic, as a teacher, and as a colleague for his achievements and his wisdom, as well as his humour and sensible advice.  We sat in my office, discussing his struggle with the idea of retirement after 41 years of dedicated, selfless, and often unacknowledged service to our university.  He is a 3M Teaching Fellow, recognized as one of the best university teachers in Canada.  Yet he was voicing aloud the same misgivings I myself had been feeling for at least a year now.   

I have observed that, as I grow older, I have become more sensitive to behaviours and vocabulary choices of people around me.  I think of it as my mature life experience automatically filtering and routing stimuli to my brain for processing through a lens vibrantly polished by 64 years of application.

I am acutely aware of that sensitivity, so I find myself frequently second guessing my reactions --

Aren't you just over-reacting?  Would they really cut you out of the discussions intentionally?
Are you sure that was a dig and not an attempt at humour?  Did your suggestion really require a response?

But with increasing and alarming frequency, I find that I cannot help but conclude that I am in fact misreading neither the words nor the actions, that in fact there is a dismissive attitude towards older colleagues that is evident within segments of the university.  I get the unmistakable impression that I have passed my "best before" date and have already been consigned to the compost heap.

Confronting those involved invariably results in a hurried apology, "I'm sorry, in my haste to get [name task] done, I just went ahead.  You should have been consulted."  And with that wee bandage affixed, healing and forgiveness will no doubt follow, and off the person goes until the next time.

There are days when I rise up against this attitudinal shift, when I rail and feel feisty enough to push back.

But lately, I have been noticing that there are more days when I  feel that the swell is too great to crest, and my fatigue draws me down silently, beneath the dark rolling wave of indignity.