Someone once said to me, "My biggest fear is that everyone else will be gone and I'll be left alone." I really never thought about it, maybe because I am a grandmother which guarantees that I'll never be left alone, rather I'll be the first to leave... A co-worker and friend said to me, "It's much harder to be left behind than to be the one who leaves." Of course with this I agree, and she speaks from the recent loss of her husband and best friend from pancreatic cancer at the young age of 50.
What I've been thinking about though, isn't the devastating loss of a loved one through illness, old age, or unspeakable acts of violence. No, I speak of our everyday beginnings and endings, losses and gains. I'm talking about how we keep the balance so that the losses don't swallow us up, and the happiness score doesn't make us really uninteresting to others struggling with their own balance.
I'm retiring in a few weeks and have been cataloging the reactions of friends and co-workers when I share the "big" news. This is a move I've been wanting to make for some time, and when I think of retirement, I get this big, silly grin on my face, my auto-happy reaction. But of course, for friends I'm leaving behind at work, they feel naturally feel some sadness. I understand this, having been in the same situation many times.
Concurrently, my sister and best friend is moving from across the lawn (we have apartments in the same cooperative building) to about an hour away in Connecticut. We have almost always been within a short drive or a short walk of each other, and this is a big change, a big loss for me.
So how do we deal with these changes? God, I am really bad at it. I was shamelessly unkind to my sister for awhile, and eventually had to apologize for my bad behavior. Talk to myself in the mirror in the morning, you know... But see, she has that silly auto-happy grin on her face when she talks about the new place, so I suddenly realized I'd have to look at it all a little differently.
Retirement brings the balance for me, the loss/gain balance. It is allowing me to feel happy for her, be supportive and appropriately excited when I see her new apartment for the first time, talk about redecorating with her. At the same time I'm thinking about excursions to the River Park with my dog Toby, sitting with a book in the Sculpture garden at the Met. I'm thinking about getting up before dawn, so that I can walk down to the river with my coffee and watch the orange light fall on the Palisades as it comes over the hills. I'm thinking of spending a Tuesday with my sister in her new world, shopping, walking by the water, gabbing -- something we could not do while I was working full-time.
It all balances out....
Always in motion is the future.
What I've been thinking about though, isn't the devastating loss of a loved one through illness, old age, or unspeakable acts of violence. No, I speak of our everyday beginnings and endings, losses and gains. I'm talking about how we keep the balance so that the losses don't swallow us up, and the happiness score doesn't make us really uninteresting to others struggling with their own balance.
I'm retiring in a few weeks and have been cataloging the reactions of friends and co-workers when I share the "big" news. This is a move I've been wanting to make for some time, and when I think of retirement, I get this big, silly grin on my face, my auto-happy reaction. But of course, for friends I'm leaving behind at work, they feel naturally feel some sadness. I understand this, having been in the same situation many times.
Concurrently, my sister and best friend is moving from across the lawn (we have apartments in the same cooperative building) to about an hour away in Connecticut. We have almost always been within a short drive or a short walk of each other, and this is a big change, a big loss for me.
So how do we deal with these changes? God, I am really bad at it. I was shamelessly unkind to my sister for awhile, and eventually had to apologize for my bad behavior. Talk to myself in the mirror in the morning, you know... But see, she has that silly auto-happy grin on her face when she talks about the new place, so I suddenly realized I'd have to look at it all a little differently.
Retirement brings the balance for me, the loss/gain balance. It is allowing me to feel happy for her, be supportive and appropriately excited when I see her new apartment for the first time, talk about redecorating with her. At the same time I'm thinking about excursions to the River Park with my dog Toby, sitting with a book in the Sculpture garden at the Met. I'm thinking about getting up before dawn, so that I can walk down to the river with my coffee and watch the orange light fall on the Palisades as it comes over the hills. I'm thinking of spending a Tuesday with my sister in her new world, shopping, walking by the water, gabbing -- something we could not do while I was working full-time.
It all balances out....
Always in motion is the future.
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