It is over 3 ½ years since I completely retired from practicing as a physician. I had been working part time since attempting to retire two years earlier.
Much has been written about retirement – preparing for it, what happens when you do retire and the fallout from it. Of course, in some ways, the experience is as varied as are the individuals who retire. Yet, there are also, naturally, common feelings and experiences, shared by many. Feeling loss and going through some grief are two of those.
In some ways, I was ready to retire. Having tried once and working part time helped pave the way for it. By the time the final date came, I was looking forward to it. It was a planned retirement. My employer had found a competent replacement, someone whose training I had even been involved in years earlier. So, all that seemed OK. But even under those circumstances, one feels grief and experiences loss.
There is a feeling of emptiness. Suddenly no one is looking for or seemingly even interested in your years of experience or expertise. Is all that training and experience simply done with? Over?
And what about all those books you bought related to your field of work, especially the ones you never finished or even got around to beginning to read? Hundreds of dollars’ worth – filling a couple of bookshelves. The hundreds of articles you clipped from newspapers and magazines, journals, filed and stuffed into those bulging file cabinets, thinking they would help inform you in your work, or be a good resource for that talk or paper. Sure, some of those books helped. Some of those articles got used that way. But now what? Can you sell the books? Donate them? Does anyone want them? And the articles – surely someone could use that wealth of information for the same purposes I did, or thought I might. Is it now just paper to recycle? What a loss!
Well, slowly I have been facing up to reality and doing all those things mentioned in the last paragraph – giving away books or taking them to a thrift store or book-bin. Taking box after box of paper to our building recycle bins. Each time that happens, one has a bit of a feeling that you are doing away with a part of you. There is a bit of a feeling that you wasted a lot of time acquiring all those resources, and now they are mostly going nowhere. A part that will never return, as I do not plan on returning to work.
Sigh, even anticipated and planned retirement where things are going well so far, when one is still basically healthy and enjoying one’s time, can bring about such negative moods and thoughts from time to time. So, just be prepared. But don’t let it get you down. Life goes on. Move on!
