Several years ago a couple of teachers sat next to us in a downtown Waterville restaurant, talking about their impending retirements.

They were older than I. I asked how a person knows when it is time to retire, and one said: “You’ll just know.”

I thought about that, not imagining I’d ever get there. When people have asked me over the last decade when I plan to retire, my response has always been: “Why would I ever want to retire? Why leave a job I love so much?”

Well, the time has come. After 38 years as a reporter for these newspapers and a feature columnist as well for the last 17, I know it’s now time to hang up my hat.

I’ll turn 70 on March 25 and my husband Phil has been waiting 20 years for me to stop working. While as a former writer and editor he understood my passion to stay on, he’s right that time is marching on and life is fleeting.

Preparing these last few months for leaving has been hard. I have worked at the papers most of my life. Most of my life! I started as a correspondent for the Morning Sentinel in 1988 and was hired as a full-time staffer in 1989.

It was the start of what would turn out to be 38 great years of covering everything from municipal government to education, economic development, crime — a wide variety of topics, both big and small — the perks of working at a community-based paper. And then adding my weekly feature column, “Reporting Aside,” allowed me the freedom to be a bit more creative.

It has been hard work, sometimes gruelingly so, but it also has been rewarding, meeting interesting people and fleshing out important information for readers.

While I covered many significant events over the years, including both tragic and upbeat, three immediately come to mind: one was the filming in 2003 of “Empire Falls,” the HBO movie based on Richard Russo’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name, shot mostly in Waterville and Skowhegan. I got to see the filming up close, day after day, and even was an extra in the movie, very briefly appearing as a reporter covering a school shooting.

Writing about the disappearance of toddler Ayla Reynolds from her Waterville home in 2011 is another story that will never leave my psyche. I have interviewed her mother, Trista, for many years around Dec. 17, the date Ayla was reported missing. I’ll watch closely for any further developments in the case and hope police find answers.

In recent years, I’ve had the privilege of spending time with homeless people and sharing their stories in my column. Through that experience, a most extraordinary thing happened. A man whose identity remains unknown to me sent me checks totaling thousands of dollars over the last few years, asking me to disperse the money to those I feel most worthy.

Being given the opportunity to donate to charitable organizations, as well as directly to people on the street, especially around Christmastime, was an incredible gift in itself. A final, grateful thank you to my mysterious donor friend.

Those with whom I have worked for more than 38 years at the papers are some of the brightest, most dedicated and compassionate people in the universe. We’ve celebrated each other’s accomplishments and seen each other through personal challenges, including family illnesses and death. It’ll be hard to leave my family of co-workers.

But most difficult, I think, will be losing my connection with you, readers, for whom I get up every morning and head to the keyboard.

Although I may not have met you all in person, I have felt you there, in every topic I’ve sought to explore, every word set to the page. Many thanks, and farewell.

Amy Calder has been a Morning Sentinel reporter 38 years. Her columns appear here Sundays. She is the author of the book, “Comfort is an Old Barn,” a collection of her curated columns, published in 2023 by Islandport Press. She may be reached until March 25 at [email protected]. For previous Reporting Aside columns, go to centralmaine.com.