Retirement is full of surprises. And not always the good ones.
Over the shiny newness of retirement, a pall of enormous sadness has fallen. On Feb. 24 my mother-in-law, Riva, passed away at the age of 93. Much as we might accept, intellectually, the reality of our elderly parents passing on, when it happens, the sky all but falls down.
Our world becomes smaller; the sun’s brightness dims.
And life is never quite the same. Parents are parents; no matter how old we get, we are still their children. And when they leave us, we are unpretentiously sad.
Entering the world of retirement not that long ago, I had no illusions that our collective parents would live forever.
My mother, at 92, recently had pneumonia and now there’s still a part of me that panics every time the phone rings.
My husband Harvey’s father is almost 96 and has outlived several life-threatening diseases.
Still we worry.
Harvey’s mother, Riva, suffered with Alzheimer’s disease and struggled through a number of seizures. A sweet, gentle soul, Riva was a loving wife, attentive mother and grandmother.
Then bam, at age 83 the disease took over. The unfairness of all that suffering cast upon such a gentle woman defies words. Yet here we are, left to navigate the grief of Riva’s passing and feeling the inexorable sadness that accompanies it.
All of a sudden, my carefree retirement is anything but carefree. There was a funeral to plan over the course of one and a half days; arrangements to make; flights to book. And a 96-year-old father-in-law to comfort and coddle. After 76 years of marriage, his life, shattered.
Tempered by the reality of two remaining nonagenarian parents in precarious health, retirement is a mixture of exciting new experiences and harsh realities.
It reminds me that no matter how much planning people do, life takes whatever twists and turns it darn well wants.
The saying “Man plans and God laughs” has never felt so true.
So in the end, by necessity, we must learn again and again to roll with it; to flex our muscles, soften our hearts and accept what is.
Because when it comes right down to it the order of the day is serendipity: “luck that takes the form of finding valuable or pleasant things that are not looked for.”
Like it or not, the rest is life, flexing its muscles.
Each of us would do ourselves a favour by embracing the seeming randomness of life for what it is: a world where nothing really happens by accident. And the new world of retirement unfolds.
Shelley Civkin is a former communications officer with the Richmond Public Library
