Personally Speaking/This Was Going to Be Wonderful!

by Laura Neary (English, Retiree)

Ah, retirement! What a lovely time to look forward to, and as it approached after my 30-plus years of employment at St. Norbert College, my mind was full of plans and anticipation. I would most certainly volunteer, I decided, and there were so many places John and I could travel, and so many books to read and mini classes to take. Maybe I could learn French! There would be girls’ trips with my friends, and more time with the grandkids. I would even perfect a few recipes that I could impressively whip up at a moment’s notice. This was going to be wonderful!

But that’s not how it went, of course.

First came the pandemic, before I had even finished out my last semester, and so when my 35-year career was over there were no bittersweet goodbyes, no handshakes, no cake; we weren’t even allowed on the SNC campus.

There was no volunteering. I had planned to offer my time at a local homeless shelter, but they let all their volunteers go, for safety reasons. Travel? Nope. Cruise ships were docked and flying was discouraged. Time with my friends was doable as long as we stayed outside and safely distanced ourselves — that is, until the weather turned cold. And there were no hugs from my grandkids, just Zoom greetings. Furthermore, my then 99-year-old mother was in an assisted-living facility that was under quarantine, and I was not allowed to visit, so I spent time every single day for weeks and weeks standing in the snow outside her window where she could see me, talking to her on the phone, so she wouldn’t feel isolated. Wasn’t I supposed to be on a tropical island about then?

As the pandemic loosened I found myself even busier with pursuits I had not anticipated or welcomed. My mother and her affairs (banking, taxes, hearing aids, medical appointments, social needs) required more and more of my time and energy as my mom deteriorated. My husband was diagnosed with prostate cancer, and my brother’s previously dormant lymphoma reared up with a vengeance. Other numerous obligations seemed to be taking over, and by the end of every day I fell into bed overwhelmed by stress and feeling like I had lost another irreplaceable day of my ever-shortening life, and doing what, exactly? I was cranky, tense, and resentful more and more often; my expectations for my life were unmet, and my “retirement” was uncontrollably slipping away.

Author Anne Lamott is famous for saying that “expectations are resentments waiting to happen,” and it took me a while to realize that I needed to adjust my expectations (honestly, I’m still working on it). Specifically, I decided that if I let go of them entirely I couldn’t resent that they hadn’t been realized. And this could give me more time to attend to what was happening around me in the moment, the little things that are the truest and most meaningful content of our lives. For example, I was able to appreciate and be mindful of the loving (and rapidly fleeting) moments I shared with my mom. What a gift it was to see the world through her eyes; she showed me the beauty of the smaller things in her world. The fluttering exuberance of the birds at the feeder outside her window was intoxicating! I was also able to recognize that although I was spending time on tasks I didn’t choose, I was gaining life skills from them, and patience. And I was more attentive to how precious the people in my life are to me, regardless of what we do together.

Plans and expectations are exciting and can keep us plugged into the world, but anticipating how we’ll control our future can also be an illusion. The only thing that’s certain is this present moment, its deceptive smallness and seeming insignificance. I’m learning to give my retirement over to these moments, wholeheartedly.

Jan. 24, 2024