We began the new week with all eyes turned toward the sky, waiting for the sun to briefly disappear. But at the same time, an earthly, political-type sun also vanished — and this one isn’t coming back.

Sen. Dick Mazza, who served nearly 40 years in the state Senate and 30 seconds as a TV spokesman for a riding lawn mower, has announced his immediate retirement for health reasons.

On a personal level, Mazza was a tremendous guy. He was a joy to talk with. If he ever had a bad word for anyone, I didn’t hear it — and if anyone would have merited a bad word or two from Mazza, it was me, the guy who has posted images of mummies and skeletons atop essays about Our Sclerotic Senate. He was unfailingly polite to me, and seemed to earnestly mean it.

Mazza also had a deep knowledge of state government and a love for the Senate. As much as anyone, he was the human embodiment of a load-bearing beam in the Statehouse. I wish him all the best as he wages a long-odds battle against pancreatic cancer. Best wishes for a full recovery and many more years behind the counter at Mazza’s Store.

But I have to say his departure from the Statehouse is one more step towards a Senate that might be less hidebound, more open to new ideas and more reflective of the entirety of Vermont. Can I regret the loss of Dick Mazza while also feeling a bit optimistic about a future Senate that doesn’t include him? Whether you think I can or not, that’s where I find myself.

The Senate has been undergoing a slow-motion endartectomy for more than a decade. If you go back to 2013, there were 18 senators who were essentially serving for life. That’s just astonishing. And unhealthy for the institution. The roster: Claire Ayer, John Campbell, Ann Cummings, Bill Doyle, Peg Flory, Bob Hartwell, Jane Kitchel, Ginny Lyons, Mark MacDonald, Dick Mazza, Dick McCormack, Kevin Mullin, Alice Nitka, Dick Sears, Diane Snelling, Bobby Starr, Richard Westman, and Jeanette White. They dominated the life of the Senate, chaired its committees, and picked a President Pro Tem (Campbell) who wouldn’t challenge them in any way.

Tenure is a thing of value. Institutional memory is important. (Term limits are a terrible idea.) But you need a balance of seniority and new blood. The latter was practically nonexistent in the Senate of 2013. If any newbie happened to gain entry into Vermont’s Most Exclusive Club, they quickly realized that their role was to sit at the back of the room and keep their yaps shut.

The Senate honors seniority and tradition over all else, as was made plain by Sen. Bobby Starr’s ability to spout bigoted nonsense without a word of criticism from his colleagues. And while there is value to institutional knowledge, there is also the tendency toward stasis. Dick Mazza was a big part of that. He was the longtime third member of the Senate’s Committee on Committees, which doles out the chairships and committee assignments. And shows tremendous favor to the longest-serving members.

One of the most heinous consequences of this was Bob Hartwell’s tenure as chair of the Senate Natural Resources Committee. Hartwell was a nominal Democrat, but he was a climate change skeptic if not a denier. He was somewhere to the right of Phil Scott on climate issues — and he led the Senate committee directly responsible for climate legislation!

Every biennium, there are rumors of a retirement wave in the Senate. Every year we get a couple, but never a wave. With Mazza’s resignation, seven senior senators remain: Cummings, Kitchel, Lyons, MacDonald, McCormack, Sears, Starr, and Westman. McCormack has already announced he will not seek re-election, so we will enter 2025 with no more than six of the Old Guard remaining.

On balance, that’s a good thing. We will get more junior Senators (meaning those with less than a couple decades of tenure) chairing committees, and the Old Guard will have less of a stranglehold on Senate governance. Hell, we’ll actually have a new face on the Committee on Committees, although I’m assuming that seat will be reserved for one of the most tenured of them all. Alison Clarkson wouldn’t be a bad guess.

Again, and I mean it sincerely, best wishes to Dick Mazza. He did his best to serve the state of Vermont as he saw fit, and no more can be asked of any of us. The problem with the Senate was not with him specifically; it was with the excessive quantities of people like him. He will be missed, and his departure should make the Senate a more open, less inflexible place.