My Mom
My Retirement Journey
By Nancy J. Remkus
“Earth Song Education”
There
will be a time that we all will face retirement. We will move in that direction
for a host of reasons: time, health, incentives, family needs and commitments. Some
of us will dance with joy and some will leave with heavy hearts and uncertainty
about what the future holds. It is easy to see why. So much of who we are and
what we are has been poured into our classrooms. The structure of our day and
our lives has been based around the school calendar not only since we took the
job, but actually since the day we started kindergarten. How can we adjust to
this new rhythm of our lives? Who are we if we are not standing in front of a
shiny new class each year?
In
April our district offered a 13% incentive for all those willing to retire. Of
course the savings for the district is sizeable which makes sense this day and
age. I faced this decision with both enthusiasm and a heavy heart. My mother
was aging and it would probably be the last year that she would remember my
name and know who I was when I walked in the door. She was approaching her 90th
birthday and I thought; how could I ever regret spending this time with her? Of
course retiring is the right thing to do. For me my mother was the clear
embodiment of love on this planet.
A
week after I signed the retirement agreement my mother had a fall and died that
night of a subdural hematoma. It was the most difficult day of my life. I held
her as she had what appeared to be a stroke and I was beside her with my
brothers and sisters and sang her favorite songs, prayed and said goodbye. Dealing
with this loss was enormous, selling our homestead was heart wrenching and
leaving my position of 31 years seemed to be more than one person could or should
have to handle in such a short period of time.
At
this point you might be wondering, why not back-up and change your mind. Tell
the district you no longer want to retire. Well, in order to receive this
incentive six faculty members had to be on board. I was one of six. I knew how
hard the decision making process was and I couldn’t make all of my colleagues
have to rethink their own decisions. So I jumped in.
Wasn’t
this the time I always looked forward to: going to the bank at ten, grocery
shopping before the rush, shorter lines at the post office, vacations any time
of the year, time to exercise before the exhaustion of the day sets in, time to
organize the house, entertain, spend time with the family. Sure it was, but it
takes some planning as well as a leap of faith.
I
am new on this journey but I am collecting tips along the way. If you are a
year, or ten years or twenty years from retirement it doesn’t hurt to start
laying the tracks now. These are some things that I feel might be important to
think about-before you retire:
1. Develop, nurture, tend-to
your own interests. It could be knitting, reading, writing, painting, hiking,
playing a musical instrument, learning a language, gardening, baking, travel….
Make sure there are things in your life that you love to do once you have the
time to devote to them.
2. Maintain or create
friendships both in and out of school. Having a network of friends to spend
time with can add texture to your life.
3. Volunteer-either now or
when you retire, put to use some of your amazing skills-at a hospital, a senior
center, a church, a wild-life preserve, an animal shelter, a theater-the sky’s
the limit.
4. Tend to your financial
house. If you need to, find someone to help advise you on how to put money
aside to augment your retirement. I think I joined my TSA a little late in the
game. It’s never too early to start planning.
5. Keep a journal on the
things you love about teaching as well as the things you find challenging. When
you get to the place in time that you need to make the retirement decision
reread your journal. It’s easy to think of only all the good things or all the
difficult things about your job. This skewed viewpoint could lead to a decision
you might regret. All jobs have their ups and their downs-keep both in focus
when moving forward.
I
am now in my second month of retirement. My husband, daughter and I have gone
to Europe and my daughter and I took a road trip to Maine and Canada to visit
my best childhood friend. I am an ordained interfaith minister so I am
preparing to officiate at a wedding and I am singing at church services.
Teachers Pay Teachers keeps my teacher-mind active and I am trying to get
outside to walk or ride my bike each day. I hope to join a beginning yoga
class, a tap dance, and look into volunteer opportunities in my area.
Retirement
is neither all good nor all bad. It has a bit of a yin and yang to it. The
freedom is lovely but I do miss the energy of my life as a teacher, the adorable
faces and all the love that fills the classroom. I move forward with the
knowledge that one-day we all will retire and for some reason this is my day
and I am determined to make the most of it. There is so much out there for all
of us-places to travel, languages to learn, people and animals to help. This is
the next step on this journey of life and I don’t want to face it sitting down.
I want to continue to grow, be the person I am meant to be, and live a joyful,
meaningful life.
Mom and I
