I submitted my retirement notification, assisted in hiring and training my replacement, and had two months left in my last school year when I fell on ice and broke both my wrists.
“See,” one of my colleagues said, “That’s why I don’t retire.”
At the time the connection escaped me: so deciding to retire causes accidents? But now I’ve figured it out. It’s the fear of death.
I heard all the usual cautionary tales: Jane retired and got fat and depressed, John retired and died in a year, Harry found out he had cancer, Sue got terminally bored and went back to work six months later.
My doctor said, with mild alarm in her voice, “retiring? Well, make sure you have a plan.” As in, if you’re going to the war zone, have you purchased your bulletproof vest?
Serious business, this retirement stuff.
A friend told me her job was so busy she didn’t have time to get sick, so she always got sick when she was on vacation. You can scare yourself imagining, if that’s the case, what will happen when you retire. And it did seem true, because I had nearly four months of sick leave saved when I retired. If I woke up feeling sick, it was so much trouble to find a sub and write lesson plans that I went to school anyway. I also have a theory that being surrounded by coughing and sniffing children helps you develop ironclad immunity.
In fact, I did get a nasty cold the first winter of retirement, which seemed to linger forever. But I’m over a year now, and so far so good, knock on wood.
Then there’s that getting depressed and going back to work phenomenon. It’s understandable:
A) We need to be needed.
B) None of us feel completely secure without work.
What if my money is gone and I’m still alive? Will I steal a shopping cart and go live under a bridge? So when the chance comes to go back to work, we have a hard time resisting. Oh, look, they need me and I can add money to my underpass avoidance fund.
I take a silver sneakers yoga class now (that’s geezer stretching for the uninitiated) and at 67 I’m one of the youngest of a bunch of successful retirees. These folks exercise four to five days a week, have regular volunteer work — a source of feeling useful — belong to book clubs and garden groups and spend significant time with grandkids.
A couple of them have, or have had, life-threatening illnesses. Nobody makes a fuss about it. They just keep putting one foot in front of the other, because guess what: whoopee, we’re all gonna die, as Country Joe McDonald used to gleefully sing. (Ha. No one under 65 knows what I’m talking about. Google it.) You can die retired or you can die in the traces, take your pick. I’m picking retired.
Patricia Dubrava lives in Denver.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is an online-only column and has not been edited.
