Mike knows everything about retirement
Well, that is not true but I am an old guy and have paid attention to things that have happened in life. I have talked with countless people in these situations and I really hope, more than anything that you can gain some solace if you are struggling because that is what I am trying to do by writing this blog.
Retirement has always been glorified as a golden award for your years of service. All your cares are dissolved and you get to bask in the warm glow of appreciation and some financial security. The old plough horse is finally let out to pasture with a gold watch or belt sander.
I have seen a whole spectrum of response to retirement from absolute terror to floating on cloud 9. The cloud 9ers don’t really need any advice and it is the people who have struggled with their pasture that I want to reach. I struggled and am still struggling and part of my coping is to put together a discussion that is both comforting and reflective.
I am 71 and began retiring about a year ago. I had worked as a carpenter for my twenties and went to university in my thirties to get a masters degree in chemistry. I worked for a few years as a formulator and chemical purchaser and as I hate being employed, I started up my own company when I was in my early forties. We made various products for the cement industry and the greenhouse industry. I loved the work and the development of new products. I met my wife at university. She was a chemist as well and we both worked rather harmoniously on our business. We had two lovely boys and both were both very bright and athletic. Hockey was their passion and at age 55 I learned how to skate and play hockey so I could coach some of their teams as well as share some ice time together. They played junior hockey in Weyburn, Saskatchewan and then went on to play at University of Windsor while doing a business degree. My mother passed away about this time and left the boys some money which they decided they wanted to buy a house and asked if we could be the bank and set up a mortgage for them. We were very surprised and delighted as we thought they would buy new cars. We used a line of credit and they bought a house and fixed it up to live in while they went to school and they took in a couple of student roommates. They graduated and kept the house to rent out to students. They are both working in Toronto in the real estate business.
About five years ago we started looking for a recreational property and found a rural acreage on a small river in the interior of BC. The weather was very dry and hot in the summer and very cold with moderate levels of snow. The climate was somewhat mild compared to the rest of BC. The house was big and looked out over the river. The barn, tack house and the fields had been neglected for a number of years so there were plenty of projects to do.
A year ago, we shut down the business and found ways to keep our customers supplied with products. We had to clear out our warehouse and sell off equipment and inventory. It was a lot of work but we finally managed. We then planned to spend more time up at the ranch. One of our sons dislocated his knee and had to have major surgery so Tammy went out to help him in his recovery. I went up to the ranch and was a bachelor for three months. I planted a garden and got the irrigation set up for the hay fields. I had to look after myself and cooked my meals, did my laundry and dishes, and did the grocery shopping. It was a shocker the first time I picked up a $160.00 bag of basic food items.
Tammy returned in mid-summer as the lad was able to get around enough to take care of himself. We decided that we would live up at the ranch permanently and put the family home up for sale. It sold rather quickly and we had just over a month to vacate. We had a big garage sale and let go of a huge amount of stuff. The boys came home to help move and in a whirl wind we moved everything up to the ranch. I am glad they were there as it gave them the sense that the ranch was the new family home. We arranged the house and worked on the acreage and one day we were both quite tired and I ended up watching the news all day to the point where my brain started hurting and then something snapped in my head. I became really panicky and was overwhelmed by a sense of being trapped. I felt incredibly homesick. I missed my kids terribly and it seemed I had made a huge mistake. I couldn’t sleep and I was very upset. Tammy was quite worried about me as I moaned around the house. We talked a lot and she helped me slowly sort through what was going on with me. I started writing things down in a journal, something I would have never done before. I just wrote down exactly what I was thinking at the moment and just let things roll out.
I was grieving. I am still grieving. I hadn’t realized how important my business was to me. The responsibilities of running the plant from scheduling production, buying raw materials, shipping finished goods and developing new products was a huge piece of who I was. The social connections from our employees, customers, suppliers, delivery people and business neighbors. I belonged to a business group and it didn’t seem relevant any more. I think this sense of purpose is there whether you are working at a job or you are business person. We have had a large part of what defines us left behind. It is a huge loss and I hadn’t anticipated it being so strong. It is literally like a death in the family. Your career is dead. I have seen many retired people coming back to coffee breaks and lunches well after they retired because they just don’t know what to do with themselves. I don’t think I fully appreciated what that was like until I became that guy.
We had always been very involved in our kids lives. I coached many of their hockey teams and other sports they were involved in. Tammy managed most of these teams. We had a lot of social activities with the parents from sports, school and neighbors. The boys played 4 years of junior hockey and we would visit in mid October and mid February and they would come home for Christmas and would be back in summer to work for us and train for the next season. They both went on to university for another 4 years of education and hockey and we pretty much had the same pattern of visits. Last summer our youngest finished his degree and decided that like his brother it was time to move on from hockey and start building a career. They rented an apartment together in Toronto and got decent jobs in downtown. They weren’t coming home for the summer ever again. It was the end of our family life. We were very proud of what fine young independent men they had become. I had always been the dad who was always looking for the fun things in life to do and invested a lot of myself in being a good dad. When I talked to Tammy about this she said I was acting a lot like Peter Pan. He didn’t want to grow up, because if you did you had to face life’s difficulties and grow old and die. It was true and I felt I had been a little dishonest acting this way. Regardless, this was like another death. I have a good healthy relationship with them as adults but the old, I want to live forever with my kids dad, was dead. In a really funny ironic twist I learned something about cows. All of our neighbors have abundant animals. Cows, horses, goats, chickens, dogs and so on. In mid November we suddenly started hearing a lot of cows mooing. We thought maybe this was the big cow rebellion starting. They have had enough. They mooed all day and one restless night I was sitting out on the deck and really missing the kids and these cows were still mooing. It sounded plaintive and sounded like how I felt. Our rancher buddy laughed when we asked him. He said that this was the time of the year when they weened the calves from their mothers. It was called “bawling”, as the mommy cows cried out for their little ones. It was exactly how I felt.
We sold the family home with all of it’s memories and our neighbors. I miss even the ones we didn’t get along with. I miss all the familiar walks and pub nights, bumping into hockey parents we hadn’t seen in awhile and trading stories about the kids. Playing league hockey and Tammy belonged to a basketball league. It was another death as all of this was left behind. I get panicky and want to go back but you can’t. When I I am at my worst I talk only about what was. When I am a little lighter I talk about the future.
And just to make everything worse my best friend hockey buddy died suddenly from pancreatic cancer.
This is a new chapter in life but the page to the last, very engaging chapter is hard to turn. The very first and I think most important thing that I have done is to start journaling. I get up at the same time every day, make my bed, have a small nutritious breakfast and write in my notebook all that I am thinking about. I don’t self edit and write everything no matter how obscure or seemingly irrelevant. It really helps to sort out the myriad of thoughts and feelings that are fighting for recognition. I am learning guitar and singing which is so out of character for me and we are meeting neighbors. I am playing old timers hockey in town. And horror of horrors, we joined a pickle ball club. I never thought it would come to this but it is a great group of like minded people and some moderate exercise. I have volumes of material to write about all of this but needed to get started. I see this blog as an extension of my journaling and would love to converse with anyone struggling with this.