My friend shocked me when she mentioned the ‘r’ word

A friend shocked me recently by using language I’d never heard her use before. She spoke of “retirement” – not now, but perhaps in five years’ time – and wanting to be a “grandmother”, the kind that takes her grandchildren on exciting adventures and opens their minds to art or theatre.

She painted such a delightful picture of her future grandparenting that I had to question my present parenting efforts and insist she write me a list of her fun ideas. Then she mentioned that “we just don’t know how much time we have” and that she wanted to make the most of it.

These thoughts sent a shiver down my spine. Are we really at that age where retirement has swung into view? Many of us still have children at school and goals to achieve at work, where professional achievements have perhaps been interrupted (willingly) to spend time with children. The consequence of interrupted careers is that this part of our lives feels full of promise still to be realised.

Many people are confronted by the idea of retirement, so they push it away. It sounds like a quietening down, a retreat from the battles of life that shape us and make us grow, a loss of purpose and relevance. Sure, many live busy lives in retirement – connecting with friends, volunteering services and helping others – but it is not quite the same as being in the thick of battle and striving within a profession.

Then again, we want to avoid missing an opportunity to fill the mind with new sights and sounds, to travel to places only read about in books, to base ourselves in a foreign village and learn a language like a native speaker through immersion in another culture, and to do these things while we are still healthy and fit.

Yet again, some of us had a taste of what retirement might be like while on maternity leave and that sense that no one needs you outside the home is not necessarily positive; our identity is still embedded, at least in part, in our professions, and there are only so many coffees one can consume with friends in a day before one craves a deeper sense of purpose. The thought that others are working when one is not can be an isolating one.

These are some of the tensions that exist in the prospect of retirement.

As to being a grandmother, I know I would like to be one – one day. But with children still at school, it is a shimmering image, not fully formed in my mind, whereas for my friend with children in their 20s and one son about to be married, the prospect is more immediate.

The question of what time we have left is one we like to avoid, yet it is a useful motivator for getting things done. Why are we hoarding things we don’t need? Why do we fail to get our houses in order? The thought of time as finite should make the sorting of clutter easier, but it still fails to shed light on how the mess assembles in the first place, and why a tennis ball, a retractable measuring tape and some superglue sit in cheeky harmony with the wedding photo on the cabinet beneath the television.