Life after life

My strawberries

Amongst my parent’s generation, there were a few men who, though they had reached the age when they could retire, they didn’t. Their wives had retired already, if they had worked, but not these few men. Their workplace was still willing to have them even though they might have passed their best before date. I assume they must have liked their jobs enough to keep working even when they didn’t need to. My parents retired as soon as they were old enough to do so, leaving behind them jobs that were just jobs and looked forward to doing something that they really wanted to do. But my parent’s friend continued working and kept on traveling to his job every day. If you asked him why he continued to take the hour and a half bus ride in to the city from the retirement community he had recently moved to, leaving behind wife and new friends, he would stare at you with a look on his face of incomprehension. Finally, he said, in a very quiet tone of voice, “If I retire, I am afraid that I will die.” He wasn’t speaking metaphorically. He was serious. He was sure that if he should stop working, the next day or week or month after his retirement party, he would die…of something. He eventually did retire. He and his wife got to spend more time with their kids and grandchildren. They traveled a bit together. They spent time at the clubhouse of their retirement community. And eventually in the fullness of time, his wife died and soon after so did he.

I have worked since I was about 17 – nothing serious until I was about 25, when I got my first job in the field that I had studied in college. Since then I have managed to support myself as an Art Director, Illustrator, Production manager, Board artist, Speaker support slide maker, Website designer, Powerpoint designer, magazine designer and in general, whatever one can do in the commercial art field. I have never needed the typing skills my mother insisted I acquire to help put food on my table – which is a good thing since my typing skills are really not all that much to write home about.

But all that professional working life is now 7 years behind me…and I am definitely retired. Am I dead yet?

I am not completely without things to do. I have 2 pro bono clients for whom I volunteer my skills and knowledge. I basically work for free now. But I get a pension, so I’m OK.

One of these groups, a Writers Festival, thinks I’m great. They love what I do for them. They are fun to work with. The project is something I am also interested in. I feel like I am doing a good job for them. But that little nagging voice that always lives in the back of my head says, “Of course they like you. You are free.” But the important thing is mostly they listen to my suggestions and often do what I suggest. That satisfies my control freak tendencies. So I’m OK.

The other group is a Jewish group working to bring Reform Judaism to Stockholm. It is a group that I have been involved with since before I retired – almost 2 decades, actually – a long time. I feel I know most of those people well. We have been on on the same board of directors together for so long that many of them have become friends. There are a lot of tasks on that board that I can not do. No one in their right mind would ask me to take the meeting minutes – the mishmash of swenglish would be illegible. Neither would I be useful to do anything in regards to religious tasks for my knowledge of such things is extremely superficial, a la carte and personal. To be the contact with the greater Jewish community is also something I would not be well suited to due to my poor comprehension of how Swedish society works and my latent phone fear. My only real usefulness lies in my years of work experience as a graphic designer. So that is what I have been on the board – a graphic designer. I designed their logo, I designed the now very out of date website and made a new one in WordPress. I make whatever graphics they need for promoting the group. And I try to maintain the look of the brand. These are things I know how to do. These are things I have experience in doing. With this group I feel like I am doing something important. So I’m OK.

Unlike my parent’s friend, my concern about my post-working life – and my fear – is metaphorical. I am still walking around. I am still breathing. I am not worried – at least not too much, that I will imminently drop dead any minute now. But…am I still alive? Do I still have worth? Does what I know have any value? And why aren’t people doing what I tell them?

In the summers, I have been spending most of my time at our country house with my husband. We have filled our planters with topsoil and I have bought plants to grow there. There are 3 requirements I insist on for any plants I might bring home: The plant has to be an almost indestructible perennial and need very little care from me, the plant has to have flowers, and finally if it has a wonderful scent that’s great. I have planted two small lilac bushes, 3 mock orange bushes, a flowering bush called Ölandstok in Swedish and two strawberry plants.  I also planted 3 clematis plants to climb up the wall behind the planters. So far none of my plants have died yet and this year one of the lilac bushes had wonderful, scented flowers and my strawberry plant had strawberries. I spend a lot of time looking at these plants. This seems to be my new thing-to-do. It seems to pacify my anxiety about what I am doing with my post-work life. For the moment at least.

I guess with my two pro bono “jobs” and my green, planted friends, I have found my life after my life. I hope, as I work to keep all of these things alive, they will also keep me alive.