A Year Later....

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This year as in every year, my birthday rolls around on March 1.  Same date, different day, bigger number.  We all get there, each and every time, unless we die first.

I'm noticing a difference this year, though, since my birthday is now tied into the day I retired from work.  A year ago today, I walked out the door of my workplace for the last time.  It's not a place you go back to visit your friends, as my previous jobs were.  A locked facility is just that.  No keys, no
dropping by.  Those keys could cost you $300, so you can bet I turned them back in.  And on that day,  February 28, 2013, I never wanted to go back.

Just as I planned it, a few days after retirement I left the shores of the USA for an extended trip around the world, visiting friends and family in just about every place I went.  After a little introspective the previous several months, I realized that I needed to do something big when I stopped working, to celebrate, to ease into retirement.  I had no return ticket, so I planned my time based on who I would be going to see next, and when.

I discovered new friends along the way, in flashy cities and quiet villages, on hot, sultry beaches and in the arid dessert of Morocco.  I sat in Paris cafés, wandered through champagne caves in Champagne.

I hiked the hills of Aragon, where you can still hear the sounds of the Spanish Civil War.  I gazed on the murals walls and gates of Belfast, sat high above Bangkok and looked out over
the world.

So many places, so many sights and sounds and smells.
I journeyed to the land of my family, sat in the same room with Irish folk who could rattle off stories of our old ones.  I stood on the ground of Caherboshina, Ireland, where my mother's great great grandfather farmed, before coming to America with his wee family.   I never felt more appreciative for the love of people and the land than I do now, that I learned then.

While I didn't think about it at the time, I've come to realize that people who said to me that it 'was the  trip of a lifetime', they were right.  The timing of that particular holiday, just on the heels of retirement, a few days past my birthday, couldn't have been better.

 Each time I go back through the photos, and I do so often, each time I turn another page of my travel journal, I feel another memory, taste another bite of love, and yearn for another big adventure.  Certain that there will be another, indeed, usually planning another.

My life is now measured differently than it was prior to retirement.  It's not measured by the sound of the alarm in the morning, or my 'days off'.  Because every day is a day off.  If I don't look at the calendar, I can forget what day, or date, has arrived.  My time is now measured by what each day brings to me, and what I give to it.  I'm no longer consumed with fear and loathing in a feeling it now as I go  back there.  Terror rolls my stomach when my mind strays near to the source.

workplace that doesn't seem to value its employees, or indeed, the patients being cared for by my colleagues that I miss seeing each day.  Seldom do I feel that post traumatic stress, though I'm

So I choose to not go there.  Instead, I think over the past year as a series of lifetime events.   Baby showers, new babies, Dad died, class reunion, birthday parties, new love, cherished friends who continue always to be part of my life.  Day trips to the mountains, to the beach, bike rides, hours
spent

painting, or writing, or reading.  Time for me to do as I wish.  I've been told, of this time of my life, 'you've earned it'.  I never really thought about it in that way, and after a year, if I haven't really earned it, I'm sure as heck enjoying it.

Close ties to my family is one of those things I've not taken for granted, I love them and I'm so grateful to have them all.  Marrying and having babies while I was very young assured me I would always have family around.   As my kids have always told me being 'the best Mom in the world' helped make it so.  I basically moved from my
childhood family to one of my own.  I couldn't be happier with all of my extended and natural families, my loved ones, friends as well as family.  I'm sitting here, cuppa tea in hand, dawn awakening outside a stormy window, the embroidered cloth on my table whispering Travel East, Travel West, After All, Home is Best.

It might be best.  Though I have to say, I can't wait to get on that plane again and be carried off to a new land of opportunity.  The opportunity to see trees I've not seen before, flowers in bloom, birds I've never seen and people I haven't yet met.  The dry erase board across the room lists my every day  'things to do': paint the pavers, plant an orange tree, re-paint the gnome, write, paint, edit those photos, smile.

And today, as two of my best friends are on the road to join me for my birthday, that smile is just where it should be.

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If you've retired, I'd love to know how your first year was, what you noticed.  What you expected it to be, how it all worked out.

If you're retiring soon, what are you looking forward to??

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Quit Beating Yourself Up

“Listen Kathy, I came to terms with this years ago.  Daddy left us.  He left us to start a new family, he didn’t want this family, so he left.  Quit beating yourself up over him.” 

Daddy died October 1, in his sleep, alone in his bed.  We received a phone call, well a voice mail to call.  We were pretty sure what that meant.  We’d been estranged, pretty much no communication for past two years.  Dad and our family.  The ‘step-family’ swooped in a while ago.  They were in, we were out.  Nothing new. 

For a while now, I’ve been spending time going over the past with my dad.  The good, the bad and the ugly. 

October 1959.  I was 11, just starting puberty, my brothers were 10 and 8.  Our little family moved to South Lake Tahoe.  Dad was a blue collar worker.  Mom’s collar was secretarial white.  Dad was a builder, he could do anything.  He figured he could make his dream stash in a small country berg that was destined for great things. To look at it now, the Lake is about the only thing up there that looks like it did 50 years ago.

We were quite the dysfunctional family as I remember.  Fights, money troubles, women troubles.  Two years after moving to Tahoe, Daddy took off with another woman to live in Oregon.

Junior high graduation came and went.  He showed up for an hour.  For the remainder of our young lives, my brothers and I received just about nothing from dad.  No cards, no love, no birthday cash, no memories there at all.

Basically that relationship never changed over the course of our lives.  Dad became and Grandpa Russ and Grandpa Russ was no different than Daddy Russ.  Sometimes we saw him, heard from him, other times we didn’t.  There were good times, short family trips, mini vacations, stories shared, new children, grand-children, great grand-children brought into the world.  It all seemed so normal.

Two years ago, I told my dad that my sister-in-law was planning a big surprise 60th birthday party for my brother.  Dad wanted to go!  He was excited!  I was excited! And though he’d had some recent impairments, lapses in cognition, judgment, memory,  I told myself, we can do this.  I’m an RN, a professionally trained, educated,  psych nurse, he’s my dad. 

Well, after three Emergency Room visits in three different cities, trains, planes, and ambulances in three different states, we made it home after never getting to the birthday party.   Out of his home environment, Dad completely lost it in a series of confused, psychotic and violent episodes. We dragged home bewildered and lost.

As a young man, Daddy survived three years of prison camp in WWII after being captured on Wake Island.  He later helped build the port in his tiny fishing village.  He traveled and loved and was loved.  My travel bug I’ve gotten from him.

As I said, since his death, I’ve gone over all my dad’s mistakes enough times to see all the things I’ve done wrong.  He was just doing his best.  I was doing my best.  His dad left his mom when he and his two brothers were little boys, off to sail the world as a merchant marine.

When I learned he was dead, I didn’t want a service.  I’d said my goodbye long ago.  Overnight a change of heart set in.  We did need it, my kids, my self, we needed to say our goodbyes.   So we had a small, home garden family service.  My brothers didn’t attend.  They had their own goodbyes to do, in their own style.  So, on a bright and beautiful fall sunny Sunday, it was time to say a few things about Grandpa Russ.   

“Remember the fresh salmon he brought to us when we were up camping in the Oregon woods?”

. . . “Or the time he chewed out the restaurant chef for not buying local fresh crab?”

. . . “I only remember how grumpy he was.”

. . .  “I remember when he ‘disappeared’ with Grandma Mollie for a couple days when they were both visiting their first grandson.  Long after they had divorced.”

. . . “How about the time he took us out in the Pacific in his fishing boat?  And Pauline got sick, throwing up over the side?  Hah hah hah”

Come together in a circle, hands holding hands, soothing threads of ‘Amazing Grace’ in the air.  Peace, gratitude, chuckles.

…“Okay, let’s see how the Niners are doing!”

I didn’t say much at the service/wake.  I listened.  Why speak ill of the dead.  Or the living? 

A final word about my dad’s dying?  I wish I felt worse than I do.