Fast forward
I HAVE reached the age when emails have started appearing in my inbox titled “Planning for Retirement”. What? I’m not ready to start thinking about giving up my university job.
This isn’t because I’m still 21 inside. When people claim that, I stare in disbelief. My 21-year-old self is so remote that she may as well be a stranger — a stranger in an unfortunate perm. Feeling 21 inside when you’re in your sixties is a form of resistance, and not in a good way. (A quick detour here: someone told me recently “It made my head explode — not in a good way.” I’m still pondering what a good head explosion might look like.)
Resisting the idea of ageing is like stomping on the imaginary brake when you’re in the passenger seat beside a reckless driver: completely understandable, but utterly pointless.
Predictive nomenclature
MY JOURNEY into self-compassion meditation has taught me that pain + resistance = suffering. In other words, it’s when our inner voices are clamouring “It shouldn’t be like this” that pain becomes suffering.
With that wisdom in mind, I’m trying to stop resisting the idea of my eventual retirement and begin planning. Where would we like to live? How soon might we start house-hunting? This is not, by the way, my way of disclosing the imminent retirement of a bishop I know.
I have to be careful what I write these days. Someone asked me at an author event recently, “Do you use your fiction to promulgate the views of the Bishop of Sheffield?” Much more interesting to ask whether the Bishop of Sheffield uses his position in the House of Lords to promulgate the views of Catherine Fox. You’ll know he’s doing this when legislation is passed making it illegal to apply nail polish on train journeys.
So far, my retirement plans are sketchy. A bungalow on a bus route five minutes from a big teaching hospital, maybe. I’ve noticed that the minute you say “bungalow”, people shriek, “You’ll get bungalow legs!” Bungalow legs are apparently a worse fate than relocating in your late eighties when you can no longer manage the stairs. Will we choose a name for our house? We could combine our own names, the way a Trevor and an Anne might come up with “Trevann” for their dream cottage. On reflection, no. We’d end up with “Pet Cat”. Or “Catheter”.
Power grab
RETIREMENT is a dress rehearsal for death, along with major illness, bereavement, and a near miss on the M1. One of the things that the litany prays that we will be spared is “dying unprepared”.
We might also pray to be spared from retiring unprepared. If you have ever been unexpectedly dismissed from a post, you will know how traumatic that can be. The greater the status and privilege that goes with your job, the bigger the challenge of relinquishing it. Who am I, now I’m no longer a senior lecturer with students to teach, with IT support when my laptop plays up, and a swipe card that gets me anywhere I want to go in my university?
This is why I see it as a dress rehearsal for the final relinquishing. Who will I be when I can no longer move or speak, or open my eyes; when, in another moment or two, I will release my last breath? Is there a temptation to fast-forward over that stage because this degree of helplessness challenges my sense of identity?
If we have striven all our lives for agency and control, then not being able to choose the moment and style of our departure is intolerable to contemplate. I wonder whether this is, in part, what fuels the assisted-dying movement.
Marking time
BUT there’s another side to retirement, as you will know all too well if you are labouring and heavy-laden right now. Retirement spells blessed relief, and the laying down of burdens and responsibility. I confess that it is always at its most attractive for me in the marking season. That’s the time when I’m most likely to have RightMove open on my iPad, and be found walking virtually in Street View round quiet cul-de-sacs in towns that I have yet to visit.
We know this sense of blessed relief can be true of death, too, if it comes at the close of a long life, “in the day when the keepers of the house tremble, and the strong men are bent, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those who look through the windows are dimmed”. This is probably why so many of our hymns couch death in terms of rest. “Perfect rest to me is promised In my Father’s house above. . .”
Hark, my soul
THERE might be another hymn playing in the background and keeping us in our post after we should have stepped down: “Not for ever in green pastures Do we ask our way to be.” This is the soundtrack that accompanies the great hero-servant narrative. “Come unto me, all who labour and are heavy-laden” is a verse we can commend more easily to others than hear whispered in our own ear.
The other week, for example, I had a wobble in the office, and found myself crying. My colleagues rallied round and made me tea. Part of what made that experience hard was the realisation that it was a threat to my identity as the one who looks after others who are having a wobble in the office and crying. It’s not supposed to be like this! Aargh! (Head explodes in a bad way.) Who am I, if I’m not the strong helper? Knowing the moment to let go is a gift. Listen, listen.
Catherine Fox is an author, senior lecturer, and academic director of the Manchester Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University.