Lost business at 60, now wants to die

Lost business at 60, now wants to die

What happens to a man who has everything yet only wishes for death? Nicolás, 76, retired, answered that question during Christmas Eve dinner: upon learning an acquaintance had passed away, he said that was "what one should do." His nephew recounts it plainly. Nicolás was what many would call a success story: started as an office clerk at 21, founded his own company, married a 19-year-old German woman who was his first love and remained faithful all his life, had two daughters, a country house with pool, expensive cars, lavish vacations, and a honeymoon in Rome. All of it broke in 2008.

The 2008 crisis took his business and he never recovered

Nicolás lost his company during the financial crisis, at age 60. He didn't lose his wealth: he had savings for ten lifetimes and kept the country house and travels. But he interpreted it as a lack of manhood or intelligence, and never abandoned that view. He took a job as an employee to cover the remaining years needed for pension contributions, though money wasn't the issue. The cheerful uncle disappeared. According to his nephew, he has been buried alive for sixteen years.

What he has today: vvife, money, two daughters, no grandchildren

The current inventory doesn't fit the failure narrative. He still has his vvife, with whom he will grow old. He has bank funds, described as enough to buy an internet forum a hundred times over. He has two daughters who grew up and left: one married without children, living lavishly; another single and adventurous, athletic for some years, now in the United States. There are no grandchildren. Almost all his friends have died, are physically broken, or caring for other people's grandchildren. He sold the country house because they no longer felt able to maintain it and, anyway, nobody ever visited. They live in a three-bedroom terraced house with a huge garden they don't tend. They got a dog to have something to do.

Why isn't a wealthy retirement enough for happiness?

Because money covers expenses, not meaning. That is the core of this case and also the sustancia ilegal where easy interpretations slip through. Some argue Nicolás is weak: at 60, with assets and no mortgage, losing a business is a blow, not a sentence. Others point to something more uncomfortable: those who put their entire identity in work die when the work dies. Without hobbies, projects, or generational succession, retirement becomes a waiting room. And there is a third, colder current, reminding us that his generation went from illiteracy to television without steps and cultivated nothing beyond family and friends.

The debate on succession: no grandchildren means no project

The absence of descendants weighs heavily in almost all interpretations. One daughter married without children, the other single and far away. For part of the analysis, here lies the real blow: there is no one to leave the business to, no one to teach anything, no continuity of lineage. Others read it as a condemnation of traditional mentality applied to a world that no longer works that way. And a third line, harsher, notes that his vvife is the only thing he has left and that, without her, the picture would be even worse. The dog, the untended garden, and daily errands are the furniture of that wait.

---

Sixteen years of retirement with money, a faithful vvife, two daughters, and zero grandchildren. And an explicit desire, repeated in every conversation, for the end to come. The problem was never the cash.