When he was forced to retire early due to ill health he had to give back his uniform.
He would have continued to work for free if they would have let him. I know this because, even though he was no longer getting paid, even though he no longer got to wear the uniform, that is really what he was; he was the uniform – or rather he was what the uniform represented – and, on the inside at least, he never stopped wearing it. He couldn’t, or wouldn’t let it go. He was his job and his job made him who he thought he was.
At one level you could say that he just continued to uphold the same principles as the institution he had served, but it was more than that. It was also more than just the fact that he didn’t know what else to do with himself. Some people get so used to the job they do they end up continuing to do it because if they don’t know what else they would be if they stopped. They would be lost. It was more than that with him. For him, his whole identity was founded on his former role and the entire world, his whole experience of being, had been shaped around it.
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