Reflections on Retirement

A love letter to the retiree

As I begin this little letter, you need to know that I have just pulled a loaf of home-made bread from the oven. It’s the first loaf of bread I have ever baked in my 79 years on this planet.

Two significant things here, I suggest.

One is the importance of the word home-made. You are stepping into wonderful analog life-giving world of our homes from the increasingly digital and business world of the office. Sometimes that may be expressed as cold into warm and bureaucratic into beauty. This could be good. Wonder bread world into homemade bread world.

Secondly, I can make this bread this afternoon because I am at home sitting at my dining room table not sitting in front of a screen in my old cubicle drafting a briefing note. I am so full of gratitude and sit with a smile on my face that resembles that wrinkly crust.

Retirement.

I don’t believe many of us ever really wanted it. We loved our jobs, we served and we were rewarded with bread on our tables and cash in our jeans. I was certainly not ready even though I was sixty-seven. I was doing good work and felt needed. That was not how management felt and I was more shoved than embraced, after close to fifty years in First Nations, municipal, provincial and federal public services. I had been shoved a few times before but this one took.

True story.

It was two months before my retirement date of April 1^st 2014. I know what you are thinking. Me too, appropriate date indeed. I was talking to a potter, whose husband was a musician. She asked me if I knew how his last day at work went down.

I did not. Do you know what he did? she asked.

Nope.

Well, he came home with the bag of golf balls and Dairy Queen cake on his breath and told me he was leaving in the morning.

Where?

Don’t know.

With who?

No one.

How long?

Don’t know.

Are you leaving me?

No, no so sorry. I just need to get away for a while.

And he did.

Threw his guitar and suitcase into the Volvo and headed due east to open mics in the Ottawa Valley, pubs in Quebec, and kitchen parties in Newfoundland.

I asked her how she took it all. Not well, she said, but you know Bob, when he came home a month later, I had my old husband back.

I went straight home and said to my wife, I have something to tell you.

I bought an old Volvo ragtop and on April 2^nd I pointed it south.

Would not actually do that these days but I found myself in post career pilgrimage mode. I busked in Nashville, recorded in Memphis and came up with a good idea at midnight in New Orleans: I would go home and create a music district (the Music Mile) in my neighbourhood. I believe I may have come home a better man, ready to do things with others.

Music and I had a mission. The mission was essentially to blow out four decades of bureaucratic carbon and hierarchical sludge and I had to do it solo. Then I hoped I might be better prepared to be a better person in the next stage.

On retirement.

Over the years I watched my grandparents, my parents and assorted friends and relatives dip their toes into the retirement pool. The dream of retirement and the reality of retirement were often at some odds.

My folks were always going to go to the coast with other prairie kin. They did not. I just couldn’t imagine leaving family, friends, church, and neighbours and having to collect new ones explained my dad.

The retired couple next door in our country hippy days dreamt of leaving the city for the country and pulled it off. Then he broke a hip in winter and had to deal with a quart of milk five kilometres away and no doctor in sight. They scooted happily back to Edmonton.

I had friends leave the public service and start consulting. Made a lot of money but died in the same saddle.

Had a friend who dreamt of going to sea. Spent a lot of cash on a boat, hit a lot of rough water, bad storms, and after two years embraced a new condo back on land.

My friend Norm Rooke was a WestJet pilot and welcomed thousands of retired folks aboard. I know I should have felt more joy from them, he says, but mostly I felt they were just checking off an expensive to-do list.

Bali this year, Costa Rica next year.

For every one of these little vignettes the reader can tell me many of the same stories where it worked out very well, thank you.

I am here though, for the cautionary tales that I got to hear and how they may have influenced me.

Bless you, if you are on the high seas still full of joy!

For me however, the pick of this first decade of retirement would be reflected in three big personal decisions.

1. I fully embraced the creative arts. Hobbies are fine but often not a big stretch. For thousands of years, humans have aspired to find and touch their creative core. So, for decades we have dutifully fed our families, fed our clients, fed our bosses and fed our systems. Perhaps it’s time to feed our souls. If pursuit of religious practice is filling your soul, again bless you. But I never really felt that soul stirring until I wrote my first story, scratched out my first song, threw my first pot and now baked my first loaf of bread.

2. The second big challenge came from Canada’s truly great mayor who challenged us to re-embrace our volunteer core values. Mayor Nenshi gave us three ways to step up. Do something with your family, do something for your community and do something for your city. I stepped up with ukulele lessons for grandkids and kids on the street. Catherine and I play for free in our community garden. I have started a facilitated self-directed music program for elder homes. I am trying, Mr. Nenshi.

3. The third reflection for me is choosing to embrace the word elder. I believe at this point in our lives, we should all re-consider the word and consider stepping into a new practice as elders. It may not have the ring or the fancy office of being an ADM but it is every bit as important in this world. Let’s turn loose the lexicon of pensioner, retiree and senior and re-claim the ancient and respectful name of elder. As you leave the official world of titles and public service and step into the everyday world of home-made and community service, know that you are going to feel really, really good about it.

The internet will give also you a thousand or so great tips for your return to home but here are a few more from me…

· Learn something brand new.

· Teach something old.

· Tell your stories, pick up a pen.

· Read some stories to the kids in that daycare in the neighbourhood.

· Have a monthly breakfast with those youngsters from your work who you mentored. Keep them in your life, they need you.

· Find young people in your community and become a mentor.

· Give back.

· Be grateful.

· Form some good habits for your mind and your body and your spirit.

May you awaken that soul that wants back out.

Oh yeah . . . learn to nap.

* I wrote this reflection for my good friend Richard Rochefort, who was coaching some new retirees. Thank you Richard. Now I have a challenge for you, the reader. What advice, story, or encouragement would you give a new retiree? I would like to create a special article with everyone’s contributions. Send your thoughts to me, I look forward to hearing from you.