the third age

My good woman thinks I’ve not been myself for a little while now. But if I’m not me, who is? I feel sort of like the usual me: lacking confidence, direction and motivation. But she’s right. Something else is going on, underneath the bluster about … well, nothing really.

She’s right, of course, because she’s a psychologist. (Joke.) She’s right because she’s both smart and wise. What life stage is left after retirement but death, she argues. She’s noted that in talking about retirement, I’m really fixating on death. A newspaper article about a home for the aged, beautifully written and containing some moving stories, fascinates me.

I am thinking more about the deaths of my parents—86 and 84 years old—and my role in their final years. They’re well enough for now, but at this age one fall can snuff you out pretty quick. My father is visibly winding down; I doubt he’ll get to 90. A daily crossword is not enough to sustain a body and mind in decline.

I look at them and ponder my body’s inability to do the things it once did. Bits drop off, organs lose their vitality. I cough more—things stick in a less supple throat; I forget things—dementia, oh please, not that; I don’t do or deal with stress any longer—I bolt at the mere whiff of a hassle.  

I counter my good woman’s argument by saying that I have no intention of sitting around waiting for the reaper. I want to get on with myriad things: living like a Serbian peasant, training to be an Olympic cyclist, being an award-winning onion-grower, loving better than Casanova, and penning a major best-selling novel/memoir/guide-to before I cark it.

She repeats that after retirement comes death. And yes, since not having a job and deciding I didn’t want to work any longer, I’ve been paralysed. I’ve not got on with the templates project, she postulates, because I am grimly hanging on to a job role, to an identity as a worker.  So I avoid finishing the job, she says.

And she’s right. Since discarding the idea of being a paid volunteer on the Newstart allowance, the crippling inertia is lifting. I am looking for jobs, I am back on the bike with purpose and vigour, and I’m banging away at those templates.

Rock on.