Keep route home open even in retirement

By KENT S. COLLINS

You will find few people sadder in the golden years than those living far away from adult children and grandchildren they love or would like to love.

Not all retirees come to this emotional time of life, but some of you do.

The ability of retired folks to move to pristine beaches and cool mountains, serene senior citizens communities and fancy mobile home parks is the magic of the modern American retirement culture. But later on, in old age, there can be a disadvantage to living in a different land. Fresh-faced retirees go to this serene places thinking they will live there forever. But old age comes some time after the adventure of retirement.

The most disadvantaged retirees are new widows who pine for their adult children and grandchildren as loneliness sets in. If you might someday be marooned in a golden years paradise, far from family to sustain you, consider the experience of one widow, who wrote while sitting amid clutter of packing boxes, waiting for the moving van to take her back home:

"My best friend and I made a pact," she wrote. "The first one widowed would move back to Chicago, and then set about coaxing the other to follow when her time came."

The two best friends figured as they grew older and were widowed that they would be far happier in a home-like setting playing the grandma role than in some resort populated by young-old couples. They came to this conclusion by watching the couples interacting around them and the widows growing older before them. Some thrived as they aged, and some didn't. The retirement community offered a good vantage point to see their own future by observing their own neighbors --- the older ones.

The women decided their personalities would do better back home with families. They knew that for them the loss of a spouse would be best soothed by closer contact with family --- assuming good family relations to begin with.

Both women set about to put their family relationships in order while their husbands were still alive. They made trips to their Chicago area kin, often leaving husbands behind. There was an ulterior motive for the trips --- to gain special perspective if they should want to move back someday.

The trips were full of good cheer, with the women taking their host families to dinners out and field trips to the fun spots in the city. Grandchildren learned to look forward to "Granny" coming to visit. Adult children appreciated the attention shown to them.

"After a couple of years of visiting," the woman wrote, "my son- in-law made it clear that he didn't want his wife playing long- distance caregiver to a mother down South who might someday be frail. He liked the idea of me moving back."

Her best friend was widowed first and took advantage of the bed she had made for herself in the Chicago suburbs. Six years later and newly widowed, the second woman was labeling the last box for the moving van to load, as she wrote, "I will miss it here. This has been a perfect retirement environment. But now I am ready to be home with family." She is smart to have made that family hospitable to her.

Los Angeles Times Syndicate

Copyright 2000
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