Person on the Page

I’m sitting in the community room at the public library. Beside me to my left: a seventy-three-year-old man whose wife is in a hospice unit facing end-of-life decisions. To my right: a sixty-four-year-old woman, still working but looking ahead to life beyond her career.

We are at the library for an information session on Medicare.  We’re listening to the presenter explain the ins and outs of Parts A, B, and C. 

Here we are, back in school, learning our ABCs all over again.

I can’t possibly belong here. Can I?  A few months ago, I was immersed in my academic career, managing a full-time teaching load with all of the committee work and scholarly pursuits that go with it.  Surprised by a sudden serious health issue, I decided to retire early to try to recover my health and enjoy the years ahead.

But something isn’t right. Wasn’t I thirty-five years old just yesterday? Wasn’t I raising my kids, managing the cooking-cleaning-laundry, and juggling it all with the demands of my job? And aren’t I still vital, energetic, intellectually alive? Yes, like the lady beside me I’m sixty-four—but a young sixty-four; a sharp, sassy sixty-four.  Aren’t I?

~ ~ ~

The dream is to plunge into retirement the way a kid leaps into the neighborhood pool on the first summer day after the school year ends. Refreshed by the shock of suddenly having no fixed schedule and fewer responsibilities to fulfill, retirees can float through their days relatively carefree. Retirement is an endless summer vacation. 

That’s the dream. 

Instead of floating along basking in the radiant glow of freedom, however, I feel like I’m drowning. Drowning in uncertainties. What is this final period of my life?  Will it be only one period, or several?  How long will I continue to feel energetic and intellectually alive?  What will happen when I no longer do?  How will all this end?

What’s ahead? That question plagues me. And what to do while I’m waiting to find out.

I have considered a few possibilities.  Should I use my newly freed time to follow my passions for cooking, gardening, and writing, and cultivate one of them into a cottage industry, or a larger industry? One of America’s most stunningly productive and successful senior citizens, Martha Stewart advises her fans that it’s never too late to build an empire. Should I devote my time to that?  Empire building?  Some people much older than I am run for president, after all. Shouldn’t I aim high with the time I have left? Should I strive for the successes that I feel I never fully achieved in my academic career? Should I push forward, working harder and harder to have a second go at it?

Or, should I seize upon the free time that I now have to do all the things I wanted to do but didn’t have time for before retirement? Leisure activities? Read all those books I’ve always wanted to read. Take more walks. Write my memoirs while sipping custom-made brews in trendy coffee shops. Spend more time at the gym. Work out to attain the slim, toned body I always desired. Learn more about history, about nutrition. Eastern philosophy. Folk dancing. Join a book club.  Supercharge my blog. 

One of my impulses as I consider the time ahead is to devote it to finally figuring things out. To look back at my past experiences and make sense of them all. To contemplate the purpose and meaning of life and pass on the wisdom I garner to the next generation. That’s what senior members of a society are supposed to do, isn’t it? The elders, the wise men and women of the tribe–those whose years have prepared them to speak truth to the young.

As he devoted himself to musing at the wooded edge of Walden Pond, Henry David Thoreau determined “to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life,” so that when he came to die he would not discover that he had never learned to live. 

That has been my own fear. That I will wile away the moments of my final years looking for life and failing to find it. Should I, like Thoreau, retreat from the world to take my place as a lone spiritual seeker? And if so, can I contemplate within the confines of my home, or must I take myself to some secluded, arbored clime, some refuge among the trees, like the spot Thoreau chose?

Or, should I embark on no search, chase no list of leisure pursuits, build no empire?  Should I learn, at last, just to be? To relax on the deck of my comfortable retirement home and sense, deeply, the afternoon breeze. Listen to the birds, the ones I have failed to see or hear all these years. Note the progress of the sun as it moves across the sky of my small portion of this world and watch as it wanes below the streets and houses of my neighborhood. Feel my breath slow and my heartbeat settle. Should I chant my internal Om into the years ahead?

~ ~ ~

I am fortunate. As I consider my retirement, I have choices. Or, at least, it seems that I do.  Many people my age do not enjoy the mobility, the mental clarity, the remaining potential, the relative physical health that I do. Many have lived their lives and never reached the age that I have.  I am thankful to be where I am.

Still, the uncertainties unnerve me. 

But why should they? Why can’t I, like a kid at the beginning of summer vacation, think of all the possibilities and be gleeful at the prospects?

Whether the rest of my days will be a brief race to an abrupt finish line or a long, slow cruise into a gentle evening, I must be determined to enjoy them.

Cover Photo: Pixabay