'None of the Miseries Foretold for the Retired'

A reader asks what I make of retirement after fifteen jobless months. I’m mildly surprised by what little difference it makes. I started working at age twelve and without trying developed a reliable work ethic. Twenty-five years as a newspaper reporter, almost twenty years as a science writer for universities. No regrets, I learned a lot and met a lot of interesting people but I don’t miss it. I heard stories about guys who retired and promptly had heart attacks. I’ve never had a gift for boredom, real or feigned. 

On average I now drive twice a week, at least once to visit the Fondren Library at Rice University. I never liked driving so that’s a gift. I sleep in a little later. I’m learning to take my time in the morning. I enjoy my coffee. I answer emails at leisure. I read, usually seated by the front window so I can observe the garden and its visitors. I’ve never been able to believe in the future so I dwell in the present, which is more real, and the past, which is more interesting.

 

Consider “Sleep, Loss” (In Code, 2020) by Maryann Corbett, who likewise has experienced “none of the miseries foretold / for the retired”:

 

“Once past the pang of handing in her keys,

she met none of the miseries foretold

for the retired. Those bus-stop waits in the cold

were well lost, and she slept the sleep of peace

alarmless. What dawned slowly was a dulled

or loosened hold on morning’s luxuries—

the moon, a sliced pearl set in lapis skies

diamonded by one planet, with the gold-

red band of sunrise chasing her.

And she thought

then of an older loss: when her last child

had learned to sleep till daylight, and her lulled

limbs fled communion with the monk, the night-

watcher, the graveyard shift, as she became

an outcast from the house of two a.m.”