I'M OUTTA HERE!

One of the tiresome aspects of retirement is finding yourself with too much time on your hands. There is a tendency towards introspection, intense navel gazing and awareness of previously ignored aches and pains. To alleviate boredom and have something to look forward to one arranges to meet with fellow retirees, often over coffee or lunch and to share news…

After initial pleasantries and the inevitable “bragatorials” the conversation invariably gets around to discussing ones symptoms, surgeries, the latest friend felled by stroke, and the best place to go for a colonoscopy. As intensely interesting as these tidbits can be, I’m often left with a disconcerting image…

I’m walking with friends, hand-in-hand, through a field of schrapnel. And all around me, one-by-one they’re going down for the count.

“Argh!! “Got me in the breast!”
“Yeow!! “It’s my knee!”
“Yikes!! “I can’t see!”

Add to this a musical soundtrack from the 80’s and you’ve got the picture:
“And another one’s down, and another one’s down”
“Another one bites the dust!”
“Yeah, I’m gonna get YOU too…another one bites the dust!”

Not me—I’m outta here! On a boat, sailing away, leaving it all behind and on to a new and hopefully very different reality. Perhaps it’s impossible to escape the inevitable but at least now, I NEVER think about it anymore. There’s just too many things to do, places to go, and people to meet. Here, when I wake up each morning with my husband beside me I feel a little like Snow White (or should it be Rip Van Winkle!). Forty years of the past fall away and I’m young once more (it helps that there’s no mirror on board) and Vince and I are starting off together again, with nothing but each other and the whole world at our feet, waiting to be discovered.