? Retirement?

 


    This is a story that Rory, a psychiatrist friend of mine from the old country, who had just come back from a visit to Dublin  told me.  He was thinking about retirement and this encounter gave him some fuel for thought.  I am telling it to you in the first person as it was told to me and I am lightly fictionalizing the events to protect the guilty but the substance of the story remains absolutely true.

The Retirement Years. 

“It was a very lucky thing”, I said, “that the Medical  Society were having a dinner meeting while I was visiting here from Canada.  It certainly provided an opportunity to see a lot of the old faces, of people that I was never really friendly enough with to have looked up otherwise.” I said to Brendan O’Brien, sitting across from me at the table.

“True enough.  I was glad you were able to come.  And what did you think of the after dinner speaker and of the topic?”

“To tell you the truth I was a little disappointed”. I said.  “I thought he was going to be discussing our retirement in all its splendour, but it really was a pretty thinly disguised pitch to sell Mutual Funds.”

Brendan nodded his head slowly, “Yes, it was a bit,” he agreed.

If we hadn’t had a big dinner and a few drinks, I’d probably have been smart enough to keep my mouth shut because I certainly stuck my neck out with the next comment.

“I could have done a lot better myself,” I said.

“So what would have been your approach, if you had been the quest speaker?” he asked challengingly.

By this time, all I wanted to do was get back to my hotel, put my feet up and read the old battered copy of the Borstal Boy by Brendan Behan. I had picked it up at one of the old second hand book-stores along the Quays a couple of days earlier.  But no such luck. I’d set myself up and now I had to try and think on a full stomach.

“Well!" I said slowly trying to buy myself enough time to think about where I was going to begin. "The single greatest adjustment in any retirement, when the retiree is married, and the spouse is at home too, is the fact that  two people who spent a few hours together each evening and weekends find that they're going to spend morning, noon and night together for evermore.  In addition, in many instances all of the major distractions such as rearing children are no longer present, and the kids don’t even live in the same city, so it's a whole new ball game.  Don’t forget that many of the people who are retiring are coming from traditional marriages where the women ran the home and reared the children and dad ran off to work.  Particularly when the going was getting tough. All of a sudden, this guy is at home all day and begins to tell his wife how she should have been running the house all these years.  Actually, I have an interesting story to tell you about that."  

Now that I was gathering some momentum and had the attention of Brendan and the other two men and two women who were sitting at our table, I paused for a moment.

“A few months ago, I looked up Sammy Weldon and his wife in their little rural paradise just a few miles outside of London, Ontario.  They bought this piece of land with it’s own little lake a few years ago and it had really become their life’s work making it a real paradise.  Anyway, Sammy took an early retirement, all set to look after their paradise and do some fancy landscaping and remodeling.  When I asked him how he was enjoying his retirement, I was surprised to hear that he was now back to work on a part time basis. 

"Gee," I said, "I thought you of all people would be so occupied by your other creative activities that you would have had no time to miss work.  Upon hearing this, his wife said. 'Let me tell you why he has gone back to work, Rory.  He has gone back to work because if he didn’t go back to work, I wasn’t sure how long our marriage was going to last.  First, he started rearranging my cupboards, labeling everything and piling them in little stacks.  Soon he was aware of how many cans of peas, corn, soup, we had.   Next it was all stacked according to specific type, of course.  I ignored that for a while even though in the old system, I could always put my hands on anything I wanted or needed immediately and now it was like being in somebody else’s kitchen.  Then I come home one day, exhausted, my shopping bags full and Sammy empties them over the table, to a running commentary like, 'Why did you buy more peas? We already have 8 cans of peas.  We didn’t need any more Clam Chowder soup right now.  Shouldn’t have bought any tomatoes as yet,either.  We’ve got four going soft already.'  Well, Rory, I had one bag full of fresh vegetables still in my hand.  So I dumped them on the floor and said, ' you can tidy them up too.  I think you need to go back to work.'"

Sammy smiled tolerantly and added.  “And I did, and we have lived happily ever after.”

I paused, awaiting comments.  I could see Brendan‘s brain just ticking over, trying to drum up some sort of difficult question.  The only way to beat this, I thought was to head him off at the pass and shoot a question at him first.  

“Well, tell me Brendan”, I said ponderously, trying to smile pleasantly rather than to smirk. “ As a busy successful GP, who has a substantial portion of the upper classes of Dublin, how do you help your patients to prepare for retirement, particularly with respect to their marital well-being, bearing in mind that for the most part, you have a pretty well-heeled clientele?”

“You make it sound as though I have a practice consisting of millionaires, whereas in fact I have a broad cross section of patients.  And many of the ones who you would consider wealthy judging by the big cars and their fine clothes are actually people who have been living at the edge for years and a couple of failed paychecks would put them in real jeopardy.  It's a standard that they really can't afford in retirement.”

“There you go again,” I said, “As though the only consideration here were money.  I do agree that many couples who are facing retirement in the near future never gave much consideration to providing for that retirement.  You must remember many of them grew up at a different time and the sort of affluence that we enjoy today just didn’t exist.  So I think that the realization that people are living longer and the governments are not going to be able to provide the sorts of pensions and social securities that people expected a few years ago, was a real shock. Now they are coming to the realization that people have to provide for their own futures and for many of them it's too late to provide adequately.  You, however, have cleverly side-stepped my question by swinging back into financial issues, which we've heard enough about tonight.  So, what do you do to help your patient population to deal with aspects of retirement other than financial?"

Brendan looked awkward.  "Not much, I guess.  I don't think that's a doctor’s job, anyway."

The others at the table nodded in agreement.

One of the women, who's name I couldn't remember, at the table gave a little sarcastic laugh.  

“It's obvious that you're not a family doctor," she said in a deprecating voice, that made it clear what she thought of psychiatrists.  "It takes me all my time to look after the sick people who fill my waiting room.  If they need help with their retirement they can go and find a retirement counselor, or buy a book about it or something.  I just don't have time for that sort of stuff."

    I stifled the urge to provide a caustic reply and simply said, "Many of your colleagues do have an awareness of the sorts of issues their retiring patients have to deal with.   All I'm suggesting is that we have enough awareness to recognize when our patients need a little guidance to maintain their mental health.  Most communities do have a wide range of resources to help.  Oh, by the way," I concluded, "I missed you name, must be getting a little deaf!"

    "Evelyn Bell," she said coolly.  "So how do you approach this issue in your practice Dr. O'……"

    "Just call me Rory," I said magnanimously.    “I think the most important thing in any relationship is the respect that the individuals have for each other.   When people are spending just a few hours together each day, a good portion of time is spent in sorting out the day to day problems that arise in any family.  Particularly when there are children, there are a lot of issues and deadlines that preoccupy the couple and keep potential sources of conflict on the back burner.  The picture changes when the couple retire, the kids are gone and two people are spending most of their time together. So, I think it is particularly important at this stage for the couple to sit down and contemplate the future together and to recognize and deal with certain inherent sources of irritation and conflict.”

One of the women at the table looked at me gloomily, “So much for the golden years.” She said, “It’s beginning to look like planning for retirement is planning ways not to get on each others nerves.”

I thought for a moment, “I wouldn’t get quite as negative as that.  Some people have well planned retirements and really do have wonderful years together. I think that these are the couples that have well defined interests as well as some common interests.  It really doesn’t matter what those interests are, could be hobbies, organization involvement, the arts, sports, or gardening.  Enthusiastic healthy involvement in something seems to be one of the major keys to success.”

“Ah, well your wife is lucky having an expert like you around.”  Florence said.

I wasn’t so sure that Anna would see it that way.  It’s much easier to be an expert dealing with other people’s affairs than your own.  During our 27 years together, Ann and I had certainly had our trials and tribulations.  And at least one situation that …………………...

Brendan's incisive voice interrupted my reverie.  “So apart from the financial provision, which was all the speaker tonight discussed, and a healthy respect for the boundaries that recognized that each person has their area of expertise, interests and individuality you must have other contributions to make a happy marriage in retirement.”

     He looked at me expectantly, so I thought I'd better try to say something profound.

“In many areas of life, a lot depends on the amount of thought, planning and preparation that is made in advance.  Many people have things that they want to do in their retirement years but the effort required to advance their careers and to raise their families prevented them from developing those interests.  Although what you want at 60 may vastly differ from what you wanted at 30, those interests can often be focused in a way that provides great satisfaction in retirement.  I’m talking about musical and artistic skills,and other aspects of the arts, that as a spectator or participant many people can derive great satisfaction from."

"George retired two years ago and he has never been busier," Evelyn Bell said, "and I think that’s because he was always thinking ahead and began to plan an interesting and fulfilling retirement.  Old age is like everything else.  To make a success of it, you’ve got to start young.   Long before he retired, he decided that he wanted to divide his days between work and play and he set about trying to make it happen two or three years before he actually retired.  He managed to arrange a part time job for a couple of days a week.  In any event, he has been doing that for over a year now and in the meantime, he has become involved with so many other things that he thinks in another year or so he won't have time for the job anymore!”

“Tell me what sort of things has he got involved with that makes him so busy.”  Asked the other woman at the table who's name was Enid.

“Well,” continued Evelyn Bell, “There was a number of things that he always wanted to do. He was very interested in the family history and always regretted that he hadn't tried to get more information from his grandparents and parents before they died.  He has always firmly believed that someday our kids are going to want to know about their roots at which time there may be no one around to tell them.  Anyway, it certainly has become a major interest that that takes up quite a bit of time with research and reading about genealogy.   He then got into this Internet thing and spends quite a bit of time studying the Genealogy sites.  Friends and acquaintances are forever phoning or dropping in for consultations.

Now that he has more time, he follows the stock market  more closely and spends a couple of hours a day reading the paper or looking at the stock market web sites on the Internet. Sure enough, we have been doing a little better on the market.  Mind you, George is a pretty cautious investor, so I don't worry, because I know you can lose your shirt.