A teenage daughter of a friend of our ministry reflected on watching her grandfather die at home. She said with tears in her eyes, “I’ll never forget the loving care Papa received from my grandmother. It taught me to care for the sick and dying. More than that, it taught me about living bravely in the midst of difficulties.” There is much the young can learn from those who have traveled the distance. Likewise, the elderly would be wise to consider the contribution the young make even to our own lives. They will see our mistakes, and they will see our triumphs. We will hopefully recognize their struggles and accomplishments and encourage them as they face the unknown future. The Bible says, “To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose . . . a time to gain, and a time to lose” (Ecclesiastes 3:1, 6 NKJV). In times of loss there are lessons to be gained. Let’s not miss the purposes of God even in times of sorrow and disappointment, for He is always with us on our journey.
I recall the story about a couple yearning to retire after many grueling years of work. Every year they had gone to the same isolated seaside town along the northwestern coast of the United States for vacation. His career with a major airline had allowed them to travel extensively, but this was their refuge, the one place in the entire world where they felt they could truly relax. Nothing, they found, renewed them more than a brisk walk along the beach or a quiet dinner watching the sun set over the Pacific. When a cottage overlooking the ocean became available, they bought it immediately, convinced they had found their future retirement haven.
Finally the day arrived. The airline duly honored the man for his long years of service. The couple put their house up for sale and began the twelve-hundred-mile trek to their new home. They lived it up: long walks beside the crashing waves, the easygoing life of a small town, the freedom to set their own schedules and do whatever they wanted. Everything was exactly the way they had always envisioned it. This was living at its best!
By the fifth week, however, unease began to creep over them, and they knew they had made a mistake. Watching the waves crash against the rocks wasn’t enough to fill the void left by their former lives twelve hundred miles away. After their few weeks of rest, frequenting all the restaurants, coffee shops, and stores began to lose its charm. “Is this all we’re going to be doing for the next twenty or thirty years?” they asked. “What were we thinking to leave our children and grandchildren?” They were fortunate that the home they had lived in for thirty years had not yet sold, so they packed their belongings and returned home. The airline executive took on a part-time consulting job with his former company and commented, “I thought I was ready for retirement, but I just didn’t think it through.”
TRANSITIONING TO RETIREMENT
Many people could tell similar stories. The old saying is still true: the grass is always greener on the other side. Retirement is quite different from a two-week vacation, and change is an inevitable part of life, no matter how young or old we are.
As the years pass we move from childhood to adolescence, then on to young adulthood and a career, probably followed by marriage and children and—eventually—the empty nest. Some of life’s transitions are predictable although others may catch us by surprise.
Life is full of changes, but one of the greatest comes with retirement. Many look forward to it; others dread it. Sooner or later almost everyone who lives long enough will experience it. “I can’t wait until I retire,” a man in his early sixties wrote me not long ago—something I have heard hundreds of times over the years. Another told me, “My wife and I are still in our thirties, and our greatest ambition is to be able to retire when I hit fifty.” In contrast someone said to me recently, “I’m dreading retirement. The company policy has mandatory retirement, and I’ll have to step aside in a few years. I enjoy my work, and I can’t imagine my life without it.”
Reactions are different because people are different; however, for most people the end of the working years is truly a watershed event—a major milestone, marking not only the end of their careers but also the beginning of their latter years. Retirement is only one of the changes most of us will encounter as we grow older, but it is a huge one. Even if our spouses haven’t worked outside the home, the transition may be just as jarring for them as it is for us.
We may picture the years following retirement as a time of rest and relaxation, and to some extent it is true. But they have another side to them: like every other stage of life, our latter years will be filled with repeated changes and transitions. The decision to retire . . . adjusting to a different daily routine . . . declining health as the years pass . . . the loss of a spouse . . . the need to move or downsize . . . increasing dependence on others—these and other events during our retirement years bring their own difficulties and adjustments.
And yet many people are ill-prepared for the realities of retirement, either viewing it unrealistically through rose-tinted glasses or refusing to think about it at all. “I never thought much about retiring or growing older,” a retired businessman confessed to me once. “If I’d run
