I no longer am what I was.

Every day, returning home from a long walk or a drive from the gym, I can’t help but see the gnarly branches at the end of our driveway. They gather by a wooden telephone pole positioned next to the cement curb of an easement, a surviving parcel of the early days when a civic road transversed my property, long before I lived here. The intertwining branches by that pole fall along its supporting guy wires, ascending like a climber who advances hand over hand. The branches, all with a common root and a deep earth color, somehow cooperate as one to overcome the wire.

No matter how many times I see these branches, I am surprised how alive they look, even though I distinctly remember severing the root in early May. Why do they still hang on? When I first discovered those branches, I tugged on them and discovered that they so tightly gripped the wire that I couldn’t force them to let go. What fuels their ability to grasp so tightly long after their life is spent?

As a retiree, I can identify strongly with the instinct to hold on like those branches. Every morning, I awake distressed from vivid dreams in which I’ve missed critical committee meetings, application deadlines, and classes that I’ve forgotten to show up for. It’s ridiculously repetitive. Then an emptiness takes root so strongly that I lack the drive or the purpose to roll out of bed and suit up for the day. Nothing’s pressing. Nothing’s important. Nothing should be a relief but instead it means that I’m awakening to strange places I don’t know, situations where I no longer need an alarm clock.

I no longer scramble in the mornings to stuff books into a briefcase while I unplug all charging electronic devices and simultaneously start my truck with a key fob. Such coordination is now unnecessary. All the accoutrements essential for my former professional life—the writing pens and highlighters, the daybooks of fine college-lined paper, the heavy and heady textbooks, the overstuffed chair from my work office—are distributed throughout our home. They find their new home wherever there’s room for them. They join books wedged in boxes, waiting impatiently in our living room and in the upstairs hallways for a space on my crowded shelves. When our son returns to visit, he calls them clutter.

The activities I once stacked into schedules have now tumbled. I sleep past 8 am. There’s no rush, no hurry to get to the office nor pick up kids from school nor attend that self-important meeting. My life, quite suddenly, now defines itself by what I’m not doing.

It’s not all despairing.  I’ve wiped out the bureaucracy of that former life, but now I’ve settled into a paradox. I now have time available for work I always labeled important in the past but which I put off. I should be digging in.  Quite suddenly that work doesn’t seem that motivating anymore nor pressing.

I’m less likely to see things now that need doing or have consequences if left undone or need checking off a list. After a lifetime of scribbling “What’s the point?” in the margins of student essays, I’m now directing that question to myself. One friend said, “Give it time. You and Margie are facing a lot of changes.” Another said, “You’re in phase II of retirement. You’ll soon be out of it.” Odd, I’m dormant in this state since retiring. I’m still the same person, yet my identity doesn’t feel rooted in a time or a place anymore. I’m hanging on like those gnarly branches.

The other day I tried to get active early, and I raked many of the fall leaves that had fallen on the front hedge. A woman around my age walked by, bundled in a winter overcoat, felt gloves, and a knitted hat. She asked me where the city park is located, as she was visiting her sister-in-law for a few days. In giving her directions, I showed her how to use the map on her phone. Here I was, the retired professor coaxed into teaching. In response, she gave me an excited rundown of her busy, retired schedule. She left, leaving me with a rake clogged with dead leaves.

A few times each day, I can’t help but compare myself to those intertwining branches, cut from the same root. Outwardly, I look the same and, I think, am in good health; at least my doctor says so at every semi-annual checkup. Inwardly, however, I feel cut off.  Increasingly, my days hum by, like some tune where I’ve forgotten the words and hope by approximating them under my breath I’ll remember them. I never do. I’ve dropped using my planner with its lists of goals, organizational systems, and to-dos for a simple calendar on my phone, but even that I rarely consult. Most days I receive automated emails that announce “no appointments today” because I cannot figure out how to turn off insignificant reminders. All the daily props that I bundled into a busy, working life linger, aimless, since I retired.

There’s one agenda item I that needs no reminder.

Most evenings, just after 5, I walk through the kitchen, down the few outside steps and across the patio to Skytop. The grills greet me like behaved, waiting school children assembled in a semi-circle. Their accessories, like backpacks, occupy every shelf cabinet. It’s winter now and at its worst, January and February, when the frigid, gusty wind has quieted all the clamorous activity from the neighbor’s swimming pool and the backyard dogs. I grab a propane lighter from an outdoor kitchen drawer and trigger the charcoal chimney into a lone flame that shoots upward through the chambers. Once fully ignited, I return to the kitchen to retrieve what I've prepped from the refrigerator. I return to Skytop to transfer the food to the grill grates; the lid lowers smoothly. I do it all, without thinking too hard about any of it. There’s no need for a plan.

The National Institute on Aging studies how social isolation affects older adults. The effects are dramatic: “physical and mental conditions: high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity, a weakened immune system, anxiety, depression, cognitive decline, Alzheimer’s disease, and even death.”⁠1  Steve Cole, director of the Social Genomics Core Laboratory at the University of California, Los Angeles, called it the “fertilizer for other diseases.” My former colleague and friend in Florida summarizes these findings  best, I think: “Without the man cave or shop in the garage or a coterie of chums, they fizzle and (literally) die.”

Not surprisingly, those with “meaningful, productive activities” improve in their mood, longevity, and sense of purpose. This is me striking for a new root structure, to take hold of my life as I stand on Skytop, my man cave above ground. I relish this solo, evening routine; it hasn’t grown old like I have. I await each day to the moment when the sky drops its nightly curtain so that I can place and pull whatever meal magically sizzles on the grates.

It’s dark now. What day is this, you say? Maybe Monday; perhaps Friday. It makes little difference. I no longer am what I was. Yet, somehow and in some way,  it’s going to be okay. Maybe not at this moment, but it will be, soon. I’m not lost. Let’s see if that woman I just met would like to join Margie and me for dinner.

notes

1 National Institute on Aging. “Social Isolation, Loneliness In Older People Pose Health Risks” NIH. https://www.nia.nih.gov/news/social-isolation-loneliness-older-people-pose-health-risks