retirement

Dunkirk NY – Monday August 19 marked the end of a stretch of time where my time was not my own. On Feb. 8th of this year, my wife and I set out for a vacation in Arizona. This was to be our second time trying to find out if snowbirding would become a thing for us, and spend some time looking at options. February is not the ideal time to drive, but we figured if we timed it right, we could get south fairly quickly and escape any harsh winter driving. We wanted to have our car available for side trips from my brother’s vacation house in Ft. Mohave, AZ, which we intended to make our base. Apart from a somewhat stressful stretch through Kentucky/Missouri, where we encountered rain, sleet, ice, snow, and clear skies, we did OK. The weather was mild, mostly in the mid- to upper fifties, and I had a nice day celebrating my birthday in Albuquerque NM. Our final day’s drive was through snow and rain, past Flagstaff and then on down to Ft. Mohave.

The day after we got there, we got a telephone call from our daughter’s partner to tell us that she had been in a car accident and was in a hospital with a lacerated right hand and a broken left leg. The driver that hit her ran a stop sign as she was traveling at about 60 MPH down a state road. Both injuries required some surgical repair; re-attaching tendons in the hand, and putting in plates and rods into the leg. We waited until we had word that the surgery was completed, and then took off for Olympia WA. It 2.5 days to get to the hospital, driving almost the entire length of Interstate 5.

The following 4 months from late February to late June were spent living with our daughter in a two-bedroom apartment in Lacey WA. We spent 11 days in a motel as we looked for a place to live with her. We could not bring her back to her own apartment because it is on the second floor of a house, with an outdoor staircase that she could not maneuver, as she was basically confined to a wheelchair in the beginning, unable to put weight on her left leg. One of her partner’s cousins had an apartment coming open that was actually designed to be handicap-accessible, so we moved in there. Her partner stayed at their place in Yelm as he had to work. We were basically live-in aides, doing all the cooking, cleaning and transporting as she began her recovery. She is fine now, about 90% recovered, still walking with a cane in public, but back at work and her own place. The car, a Suburu Forester, was totaled. We are very lucky, blessed, and fortunate to have her still with us.

We were able to leave on June 23, racing across the country in 5 days. I started rehearsal for Love’s Labour’s Lost at Shakespeare in Delaware Park on July 1, three days after I got back. To stay out in WA I had to drop out of a show I had booked at the Jewish Repertory Theatre for April-May. LLL closed on August 18.

Obviously I did not do much writing during all this time. I hope to get some more writing done now that things have settled down for now. I have some plans for a few small projects, and I begin rehearsals for Buffalo Opera Unlimited’s production of La Cenerentola beginning Sept. 8. It does seem to me that in the past 13 months, events have dictated my approach more than any choices I have proactively made. I’ve been reacting to circumstances more than I have been pursuing any personal goals or plans. It’s made me realize how much of life can be simply out of your control, and how tenuous living can be. It’s also possible that the universe is telling me that snowbirding is not in my future.  -twl

Dunkirk NY – I am getting ready to head to Massachusetts later this week. I’m going to my brother John’s house to spend a week caring for my mother while he and his wife take a vacation in Jamaica, I believe. My brother James is a member of the jam band moe., and I believe this is the week where they go down to Jamaica and play for three nights in an all-inclusive resort. John is a big fan, and follows the band whenever he can. So to give him a break, my wife and I go when we can to care for Mom.

Since my father’s death, my mother’s frailty has become more evident. At 89, she has some mild dementia going on. Her moods are darker than I remember, and she is slightly paranoid. She wants very much to be independent, but she is no longer able to live on her own. She can still get around well enough to do a little shopping here and there, but not like in the old days. No driving, of course. She has no evident health issues other than a recent event where she was retaining fluid in her legs. Her blood pressure is better than mine, her eyesight is still good, but her hearing is very diminished. She pretends to read, she watches television (Blue Bloods is her favorite), and she loves the movie Sister Act 2. When I go to take care of her, I can see what’s in store for me. She is only 22 years older than I am.

I often wonder if in today’s culture we are being sold a bill of goods about retirement. I read a lot about retirement finances, simply because we are now living off my retirement savings, and so often the articles are either very positive or very negative. I am either going to lose all my money because of some unforeseen disaster, or die with a bunch of money not spent. Social Security is going to be fixed, or it’s going to run out of money. Volatility in the stock market will cut my savings in half (the money in my savings, after all, is not real. It’s just numbers on paper until I take it out.). And of course, what age will become the “next” age. Will I be hearing at 90 that “90 is the new 75”?

If you were to go simply by the articles and the general upbeat and positive aspects of retirement information, you might be forgiven if you came to the conclusion that somehow you will remain at 90 exactly as you are when you retire at 65. Over the weekend I read this article from the NY Times written by a reporter who is following around a collection of older New Yorkers, all over 93.  Three live in assisted living facilities, one remains in his own apartment (he also continues to pursue his career at 96). Two of his original subjects passed away. The article is a good dose of positive and negative news; while health issues for each abound, they are all still mentally fit and, to some extent, continue to be active. But the activity is always slow-paced, something of a struggle, and in most cases, assisted.

Articles like this one and this one attempt to spread the idea that retirement needs to be re-imagined. Yet I cannot escape the feeling that the whole modern zeitgeist around retirement is one that attempts to get people not to think about death. We have always worshiped youth in this country, and have never valued age or wisdom. And increasingly, society is leaving people on their own to develop their own retirement plans to insure financial stability/survival. Businesses are cutting pension plans, states are not fully funding civil service pension plans and reducing payouts to current pensioners, and Social Security is always a political football. Like everything else in this modern era, the advertised image of retirement, as well as the painted ideal of retirement, becomes another “American Dream” to pursue. Have a second career; re-invent yourself; take that European trip; buy that RV and travel America full-time; move to that house in Florida or Arizona. I have yet to read the article that suggests you stay in your home, plant a garden, read, watch a little television, and simply relax. It’s always about going and doing; it’s never about being.

I don’t really yet know what to make of it all. America is a society that has always been on the move, and the consumer capitalist mentality that is at the heart of it all consistently prods us to be more, do more, succeed more. When, I wonder, are we ever done with all that? As I get set to care for my mother, make sure she takes her medication, keep her moving as much as I can, and help her get in and out of bed, I’ll be staring in a mirror showing me my ultimate future should I manage to live that long. It’s that mirror image, I think, that gives me the most anxiety about how to proceed with my own life. Balance, as always, will be essential. The most important concept for me, however, is not to get caught in the retirement hype. One thing I hope I can achieve is not to let the zeitgeist dictate my own approach. Yes, I will travel; yes, I will drive my RV; yes, I will check out Arizona – but it has to be on my terms and in my own manner. All I need to do is figure out what manner that is.  -twl

Dunkirk NY – It doesn’t take much to realize I’ve been absent since last writing in  early June. Apart from More Light, the last post I wrote was June 4, 2018. On June 9, 2018, my father passed away rather unexpectedly at the age of 89. During a family reunion he had organized to celebrate his and my mother’s birthdays, he had a massive coronary event. At 12:30pm I was chatting with him as he sat in one of his chairs in my brother’s house, where the gathering took place. At 5:30pm I was staring at his lifeless body off the emergency room of the local hospital. It’s been downhill since then.

I am not sure I would call what followed a period of depression. I think of it more as a period of disinterest. But I can’t deny his death brought about a few changes in my situation. He died while I was in the middle of rehearsals for King Lear, and the ensuing rehearsals and performances allowed me to stay busy until the show’s run was completed. After the show closed, I returned to help my brother settle our mother into the in-law apartment he had built into his new house for just this eventuality. It had become clear during the ensuing weeks after his death that my father had been covering for my mother’s growing dementia. I am now part of the three-brother team assisting her in getting through the days. I’m fully in that phase of life where I am helping to take care of my mom. Adjusting to this new reality has been a major part of the reason I stopped writing.

In the months that followed, death seemed to be stalking me. My oldest friend Tony died September 21 at the VA Hospital in New York City, and as he had no family, I ended up being the one who had to attend to his final affairs. My mother’s brother, my uncle Armando, died in early December, and on this Christmas Day past a good colleague and friend for 30 years, Mac Nelson, died; again, suddenly. This list does not account for the deaths of 3 other people I had worked with in the past in Buffalo theatre.

Given these events and more (a minor knee operation which still put me down for 5 weeks in October), I began to grow disinterested in many things. It has seemed as if I had lost control of living in some ways, because the schedule of things I had planned to do did not happen. The old saying “life happens while you’re busy making plans” seemed quite true. No solo camping trip to Yellowknife; no two-month fall trip in the RV.  November arrived, darkness and winter has set in, and since Thanksgiving the weather in these parts has been nothing but grey and rainy, with little to no sunlight for long stretches of time. Filling the days has become a challenge.

All these deaths have put into sharp relief the notion that I have a short time left. And the thing is, it isn’t a matter simply of time. It’s also a matter of deterioration. It is 23 years until I turn 90, but how many years is it before I become physically unable to fend completely for myself? How long before I can no longer hike an entire day? How long before travel becomes impossible? What health complications lie ahead? In short, I may had those 23 years ahead, but what will the quality of those years be?

I have some catching up to do here, and I will probably be doing that over the course of the next few weeks. 2019 does look at this point like a busy year already. I have two shows booked, and a 4-week stretch of time scheduled to spend in AZ in Feb/March. I have applied to become a volunteer driver for the Disabled American Veterans (DAV), driving vets to medical appointments, but so far the process has been agonizingly slow, and I haven’t started up yet (and may not until April). I would like to get back in the writing habit if I can, because for one thing it fills time in the day, and for another, it should have some effect in sharpening up my writing skills.

I would say right now I remain unfocused in terms of what I would like to accomplish in the next few years, and I am also still unfocused in terms of how I spend my days. As 2019 begins, I need to spend time reclaiming both my daily routine as well as long-range goals. I need to overcome this general sense of disinterest in life around me. The quieter, slower, more self-directed pace of retirement has, I believe, become my greatest challenge of all, because I have no external motivating factors involved.  My three-year period of de-compression has one more year to go, and I need to spend this year transitioning from that sense of release to something that is more active. It doesn’t have to be large-scale projects, but I do have to learn to invent and execute my own projects. I have to choose to do things, such as choosing to write this post today. Didn’t someone write somewhere that hell is having to make choices?  -twl