Retirement Loss and Grief
Trends in Life Expectancy and Retirement
Between 1950 and 2010, the global population nearly tripled, and the U.S. population doubled. Population growth from 2010 to 2050 is expected to be much slower and to tilt to the older age groups. As well, there have been significant changes in life expectancy. Between 1930 and 1960, life expectancy increased by more than 12 years, particularly so for men at the higher end of the economic ladder. However, this trend is even more pronounced for women. Women in the top earnings bracket who reach age 50 can now expect, on average, to live another 41.9 years (the income gap surged from 4 more years for people in higher-income groups to more than 13 years).1,2,3
Between May 2000 and May 2016, the Pew Research Center in the United States reported that the percent of people over age 65 who held jobs in the United States increased from 12.8 percent to 18.8 percent (and that’s just those people who had jobs, not those also seeking jobs). Over this 16-year period, employment rose among 65- to 69-year-old s (close to one-third work), but also among those ages 70–74 (about one-fifth work). A 3 percent increase in employment was also reported (from 5.4% to 8.4%) for the 75-plus age group. The reasons for this increased employment of seniors? Some are economic: fewer employees have fixed pensions, and the age of eligibility for Social Security in the United States has increased. Some reasons are social and health related: lengthened life spans, improved health (at least among high-income seniors), and people with higher education levels generally working longer and having more interesting and less physically demanding jobs. However, the major reason that seniors work longer is because they can. They are physically able to, and they want to.4
With greater numbers of women working longer, combined with the “longevity revolution” (Taylor and Mintzer, 2011; Sadler, 2000), women can expect to spend perhaps 20 or 30 years in retirement. The transition to retirement, and the various transitions in retirement make this phase in a woman’s life very significant (Borrero and Kruger, 2015; Hovanec and Shilton, 2016; Ragg, 2013). In addition, as women typically experience a different work reality than do men, it is not surprising that a woman’s experience of transition into retirement, and of retirement, is also unique to women (Borrero and Kruger, 2015; Hovanec and Shilton, 2016; Price 2003; Schlossberg, 2004; Skucha and Bernard, 2000). Further, because women are generally expected to outlive men at an increasing rate, and therefore experience loss and grief at an ever more increasing rate, the retirement experience creates yet another layer of loss for women (Span, 2015)—a loss that occasions grief.
Elizabeth’s Experience of Retirement: A Culminating Grief
Elizabeth had two marriages, both long term. She regards herself as having lived primarily a traditional role in her first marriage, even though she worked full time and maintained the family home, with some support from her husband for childcare. She participated in the family business and had a large circle of family, friends, and relatives with whom she maintained and often organized regular social contact. Soon after the dissolution of that marriage, Elizabeth pursued graduate and postgraduate studies, where she met her second husband. In her second marriage, Elizabeth described her role as less traditional, with greater emphasis on a modern/postmodern role. She felt quite comfortable transitioning between traditional and modern classifications, but realized that the different social moirés between her professional and personal life presented a constant balancing act, not dissimilar from what she had experienced during her first marriage. Still, she felt she coped well with the ambiguity of being wife, mother, business partner, and independent woman entrepreneur. That second marriage ended amicably after almost 25 years. Elizabeth is now in the third year of living a single, retired life. This is her retirement experience.
I’ve thought a lot about my retirement experience, mostly because I had resisted retirement for such a long time. In fact, I used to call retirement the “R word.” My ex-husband wanted to retire about five years before I did, which put me under quite a lot of pressure. Simply put, I wasn’t ready to give up everything that I had worked so hard to earn. We had started our business together, and we had done quite well. And then, just retire and turn away from our business and our livelihood like we hadn’t even been there? That made no sense to me whatsoever.
There were things I wanted to do besides work—things I had neglected over the past quarter century or so, but I always thought those things could wait. We didn’t live what you’d call a very balanced lifestyle, that’s for sure, but we did enjoy our time off. We took trips; we served as good role models for our staff; and our company had a good reputation. So, if we retired—what then? My ex-husband and I were the lifeblood of the company. It was gratifying in some ways, but it also felt like a huge responsibility, especially when it came time to close the doors.
Our business was our baby. We didn’t share children, so, morning and night, conversation in our home and on the way to work generally focused on “the business.” Little wonder, we ran out of energy for the marriage. But that was kind of how I saw retirement—a running out of energy, a giving up. At least, that was my sense of it. That was how I had seen my grandparents retire from their businesses (my grandmother’s life hadn’t changed much, other than she seemed to slow down quite a bit). But my grandfather had been a vibrant man, and when I think of him in retirement, I see him sitting in his favorite chair at the window overlooking the street—just sitting mainly, watching the cars go by. And in the summer he would spend a lot of time with his apple tree and his raspberries in his garden. By this time, many of his friends had passed away, so his world began to shrink, and I guess that’s the vision of retirement that surely I did not want for myself.
After I closed down our business and became formally “retired,” I enjoyed the break—for a while. And then I began to feel useless. I really missed the interaction with people—staff and clients. We had been fortunate in our business that many of our clients were very bright people; interesting to talk to and spend time discussing issues with; and, most importantly, their jobs and the decisions we made impacted other people’s lives. Giving advice to those clients meant something. It was important work, and I missed it. I missed feeling like what I was doing mattered. It wasn’t that I needed the accolades. I just needed to know that I was spending my time on something important, not only to me but to others as well. When I retired, all that stopped.
When I think about it now, losing all that was one of the saddest times of my life. When my father died several years earlier, it was my first encounter with the death of someone very significant in my life. It was strange how my body was remembering those same feelings now in retirement—the emptiness, the constant absence, the vacancy—always an empty place at family gatherings. The futility of a life lived far too short.
Retirement had this same feeling for me. It felt like death. And it hurt—emotionally, physically, and spiritually. It was as if I could feel the energy draining from me with every passing day. It was a cold and silent loss. No more winning proposals, closing the deals, morning meetings with staff; no discussion of concepts, approaches, frameworks, or findings; no interpretation. Nothing. No phone calls, meetings, presentations. All of the things I had built and come to enjoy, and had become pretty good at, had come to a screeching halt. Retirement doesn’t really sound like a death, but it certainly felt that way to me.
And that was just the start.
Even though all the work had stopped—the scheduling, planning, assigning workloads, analysis, report writing—I still couldn’t get my mind off it. People would say things like “Congratulations! I’ll bet you’re glad to have that phase done. No more long hours, working weekends, hassles from clients. You deserve the time off!” And part of that was true. But how do you tell them that you miss it all—really miss it all? That was the hard part. I tried to keep a smile on my face, fake that I was really struggling. I was missing my work like crazy. Most of all, I was missing what I had been passionate about. I was missing something to be passionate about.
I felt like I had abandoned my business, like it was a thing that needed nurturing and that I had simply turned my back and walked away from. It felt like I had given up on it, and now in some ways, that it had actually given up on me too. I found myself being hurt, angry, ashamed, guilty, and resentful, and yet I had no one else to blame but me. I had made the decision for things to turn out the way they did. But I had not expected to feel the way that I did!
For people who don’t own their own businesses, it’s different. They can just walk away; say, “Good riddance”; and it’s done, and they’re glad to go. I have friends who have done that and they seem very happy with their decision. They closed the employee door and left—most without regret. But I found myself asking time and again, ‘What on earth was I thinking!’ It seemed that I had somehow betrayed a big part of myself—given away the very things that gave me credibility. It was as if I had to clear out any memory of that life and start over. When I had my briefcase in hand, I felt like someone with a purpose. Somehow, somewhere, I needed to find a new me. I needed to redefine who I was and reclaim the energy, the spunk, the tenacity, the perseverance that led me to start a business in the first place. Clearly, my work had defined a big part of me. My children were grown now and on their own. And my family had gone through other deaths, other recoveries over the years. But I must say this retirement thing, day after trying day, felt like an increasingly isolating experience. So, now what?
Those first two years of coming down, and coming out in some ways (not the gender kind, but the “who am I anyway?” kind) were important ones for me. I realize now that so much of it was like stepping through a door. On one side was what had been familiar. On the other was what I hadn’t yet discovered. It wasn’t that I was so afraid: I had skills. I had resources. And I had time. But I hadn’t planned for it. I was too busy. And so it became hard work. It was really hard stepping through that door—not the not knowing what was out there, but the not knowing what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I had asked those tough questions in my late teens and early 20s, and likely again in my early 30s. I didn’t remember the decision being so difficult, and maybe so important. At this age, in my early 60s, when I could see the horizon of my life a little more clearly, the decision about what to do with those remaining years haunted me almost all the time. I didn’t think I had much more time to “screw up” so to speak. I’d never really done that in my life, but now it seemed a real possibility. I had the role of mother, and now even new grandmother at my doorstep. I lent some care to an aging parent, to friends who were going through difficult times in their lives, but the decision about what to do now in my life fell completely on my own shoulders.
When I’d started out, knowing I wanted to build a business, I had been driven—very driven. I wanted to know everything I could about my field and also about being successful. And now I felt like I had to start all over again in virtually every aspect of my life. Sure, I had a bucket list of things I wanted to accomplish, places I wanted to see, things I wanted to learn, and learn to do really well. I took up sailing. I learned to paint a little. I learned that in the act of doing the learning, time flew by. I didn’t have to dwell in what I had lost. I didn’t have to wallow anymore in my own depression and self-doubt, and even shame. I felt ashamed of myself. I was an educated, skilled woman. I had helped other people for 30 years, and now I felt stuck in neutral. I’d finish doing something exciting, helm the boat, and then I’d go back home to an empty house. I looked for every reason not to be there. Traveled. Spent time in the sun. And yet, I wasn’t anywhere near settled. I made some new friends. It didn’t help that I was divorced—again—I had some familiarity with that, and my ex-husband and I were still friends, so I knew that it wasn’t divorce grief that was getting me down. It was the culminating grief of all of it, and retirement made room for it, made the time for me to sit in it, wash that kind of grief all over me, like a mud between me and a real life—or at least a better life that I envisioned for myself.
I had reached the age where many women have already gone through more than one death in their lives. Parents, grandparents, cousins, close friends, colleagues. Some expected, some sudden. But this, this retirement thing, this was different. It was as if all of these other losses had been put in a bag with a big string around them, and finally in retirement, I had time to lay it all out and take stock of what I had really lost in my life. Now I had time to ask the tough questions. Why had some of these people been taken so young, so purposelessly in the prime of their lives? How could their losses be instructive to me, and how I would move forward in my own life now?
I found myself revisiting and trying to make sense of all the people I had lost in my life and what meaning that had given mine. I tried to think of the blood of my grandmothers that ran through my veins. What would they have done? How would they have handled this enormous change. I thought of them, drawing strength from the pioneering women who buried infant children in the dead of winter when the earth was too frozen to dig a grave. What pain must they have suffered, endured, and yet survived? I felt as if their blood must run in my veins too, and yet I had such trouble finding that strength now.
I walked miles and miles around the mountain where I lived. Some days I wore myself out from the sheer exhaustion of it, just trying to get away from myself. And pretty soon, it dawned on me. I would totally have to start again. Start over. Look again at what I found interesting and exciting. Start with the skills I already had. If I needed new ones, I would have to build those too. It really was high time I stopped feeling so sorry for myself.
I had to let go of what I thought I had lost and look deep inside to what was important that still wanted and needed to come out of me. I needed to matter in my own life. I knew that there was only one person at the center of this whole experience that could really make a difference, and that was me.
I began to read—a lot. Self-help, religion, philosophy, biographies. What had other successful people done? Was there a new way to be successful? How had they handled this winding down? Or maybe a new way of winding up?
Other people looked to me like they were enjoying their retirement. No one talked about hating it like I did. No one looked as unhappy as I felt. I had loved my job, and now it was gone. Retirement made me feel out of control. A life of schedules and deadlines no longer existed. I hated some of that, though at the same time I loved it. It had given my life structure and purpose. And now, I was tired of the floating.
It took another year, at least, for me to find my grounding. I found solace in nature, and I’ve let go of a lot of the hurt, the shame, the blame, and the pain of it all. I simply had to take the time to let it go. And now I have. So, I’m planning a learning vacation. Something with purpose that fits where I am now in my life. I’m taking up things just because they intrigue me. It no longer is “retirement” for me. It’s a different time and place in my life. It’s all brand new. It has nothing to do with “re-” anything.
When I think back on it now, I feel foolish and a bit embarrassed about the whole transition. I could have been more plan-full, had a plan for retirement, just like I did for everything else in my life. I had planned my career, planned when to marry, when to have children, what kind of business to build, what kind of staff to hire, what kind of home to buy—a million details in building a life. It felt like there were no more important decisions to be made in my life. But I was entirely wrong about that.
I needed time to grieve. I needed time to find my spiritual self, the core of who I really was, how to find joy in my life without my business. I needed time to sort out how to stimulate myself. I couldn’t depend on other people to do that for me. I had to do that for myself.
My traditional life had certainly changed. Some of it I longed for, but most of it I did not. If anything, “retirement” has been a true transition for me on every front. I’m at that place now, and I must say, it’s exciting, and it’s freeing. The “worry times” are fewer now. I do make room for them, though, because I know they serve a useful purpose in helping me to navigate yet another course change. It is a rather mysterious adventure and if I look at it that way it becomes not just tolerable, but a new homeostasis. Living with the mystery of what’s next has almost become, dare I say, comfortable. It’s a bit like planting a garden blindfolded, so that you can trust that things will grow, you just don’t know exactly what or where they will be. I feel pretty confident that I’ll map a new course soon, and I’m okay being in this discovery phase a bit longer.
Elizabeth’s experience reflects one of the most frequently reported challenges faced by people entering retirement: that of change or loss of identity (McCaw, 2011; Schlossberg, 2009). It is not uncommon today for one’s work role to define who they are, and when an individual leaves his or her career this identity may require reevaluation and redefinition (Hovanec and Shilton, 2016; McCaw, 2011; McCoyd and Walter, 2016; Sadler, 2000; Schlossberg, 2004, 2009; Taylor and Mintzer, 2011). While some core components of identity may remain consistent across work and nonwork endeavors (Borrero and Kruger, 2015), retirement is a time when the understanding of self and self-worth, undergo a transition—a process that, for many, is a source of considerable anxiety (e.g., McCoyd, 2016; Schlossberg, 2004, 2009).
Finding meaning and purpose in one’s everyday life is an important part of a successful transition between work and ‘retirement’ (Hovanec and Shilton, 2016; McCaw, 2011; McCoyd, 2016; Price, 2003; Sadler, 2000; Schlossberg, 2004, 2009; Taylor and Mintzer, 2011). A sense of value can come from finding and pursuing one’s passions (McCoyd, 2016), volunteering, engaging in recreational activities or travel, spiritual journey, “encore careers” or “bridge jobs” (Farrell, 2014; Sadler, 2000; Taylor and Mintzer, 2011). As well, it’s important to change the structure of social relationships and connections to replace those established in one’s work role and/or physical workplace (Hovanec and Shilton, 2016; McCoy, 2016; Price, 2003; Ragg, 2013; Sadler, 2000; Schlossberg, 2004, 2009; Taylor and Mintzer, 2011). Especially for women, social connections are central to both identity development and satisfaction in retirement (Borrero and Kruger, 2015).
Critical too for women is their financial status and physical health. Women are living longer, and their retirement funds and good health must last longer with them (see, e.g., Hovanec and Shilton, 2016). And often, given their age, retiring women have lived through traditional roles and have been exposed to, if not lived directly, modern/postmodern roles as well, and they understand clearly what movement between them requires of their emotional, psychological, and spiritual capacities. For high achievers, in particular, it is important that these women stay engaged in activities that give them value and that, in return, they can value as way to sustain them into the next stage of their lives.
In summary, retirement is a process, a journey, which often is accompanied by a sense of loss and grief. As in Elizabeth’s case, one can see her experience reflecting phases of numbness, searching and pining, depression, and finally, recovery (Parkes, 1964). She went through a process of redefining her personal identity and may continue to do so as she finds or creates meaningful new relationships and social networks to help sustain her (McCaw, 2011; McCoyd and Walter, 2016; Price, 2003; Schlossberg, 2004). Finding meaning and purpose is central to physical, psychosocial, and spiritual wellbeing. And, without doubt, most important of all at this phase of a woman’s life, one must remain open to and awed by the mysteries that continue to surprise and anoint our very souls. Grieving reminds us of the “profundity of the mystery of living an individual life, in which struggles with finiteness, change, uncertainty, and vulnerability recur and persist” (Attig, 2011, p. 15).
Notes
1. D. Cohn and A. Caumont (2016), “10 Demographic Trends That Are Shaping the U.S. and the World,” March 31, 2016. http://www/pewresearch.org/author/dcohn/.
2. P. Span (2015), “Income Inequality Grows With Age and Shapes Later Years,” New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/13/health/income-inequality-grows-with-age-and-shapes-later-years.html.
3. The downside is that there is a trend toward greater inequality in longevity and life expectancy in both men and women. In other words, women with resources are expected to live longer and have a better life than those without resources, and this gap is expected to widen.
4. P. Span (2016), “Of Retirement Age, But Remaining in the Work Force,” New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/02/health/retirement-working-longer.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0.