November 1, 2017

In the Ashbury household, the countdown clock to retirement is at R minus 23. My beloved’s last day on the job is Friday, November 24th. The day following is the company Christmas party, to be held at a steakhouse not far from the job site. We’ve been invited to attend, and it will be, in all likelihood, the last time my husband sees any of the people he’s worked with—some for as long as twenty-five years.

He’s never been one to mix socially with his co-workers. He never really made any close friends on the job. In fact, he really only has a small handful of people he considers to be close friends. I actually believe that’s how it is for most of us. We could all probably count the people we have met in our lifetimes in the hundreds, but close friends and confidants generally without using all the fingers of both hands.

David commented in his note this morning that he thought it was going to be harder to get up each morning the closer he drew to the end. He really is tired, and looking forward to no longer having to get up at 4 in the morning. I’ve been a witness to how difficult it’s been for him these last couple of years. He’s worked hard all our lives, even to the point of, early on in our marriage, shoveling driveways in the winter when he was out of a job. He deserves his rest.

We’ve done a fair bit of talking, as you can imagine, over the last little while, about what our daily routines will be like. He insists that he doesn’t want to waste his days away, and so will likely get up at no later than seven-thirty each morning. Of course, for him that’s three and a half hours later than normal.

I’m more of the theory that we’ll kind of release the norms of getting up and going to bed. David used to be a night owl, and so did I though we went through those particular stages at different times in our lives. My brother told me recently that he tends to go to bed and get up early, whereas his wife of more than 50 years now gets up and goes to bed late.

I won’t be surprised if we have a similar circumstance, after a while. We’ve never lived in each other’s pockets our entire lives. We’ve never been a couple who had to do everything together. We’ve always pursued our own interests, and actually enjoy the time we spend by ourselves (as in, himself and myself). Aside from the three weeks he’s had off over Christmas the past couple of years, we haven’t spent day after day together, not in the last, well, thirty-nine and a half years. There was always work, and so this is going to be…interesting.

We joke about it a little, because we are both very much aware that no one is perfect. We’ve been together a long time, but that doesn’t mean we live, sleep and eat hearts and flowers. No one does. We’re each of us very capable of getting on the other’s nerves. For his part, my husband plans to get himself a scooter, and go out a couple days a week. For my part, I plan to get up earlier, and encourage him to nap if he’s tired. One takes one’s alone time where one can find it.

We aren’t marching into our futures, secure and solid in our idea of what it’s going to be like for us. We’re old enough to know that few things are as imagined. But we’re also wise enough to understand that this is the dawn of a new phase in our lives. So we’ll face it the way we’ve faced most challenges over the years.

We’ll do the best we can, and try very hard not to sweat the small stuff.

Love,
Morgan
http://www.morganashbury.com
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury