Retirement Home

Dearest Rachel –

It’s been one of those days where nothing interesting is happening, at least not personally, which is okay; life doesn’t always have to have something monumental going on in it every day. In fact, if it did, it would get to the point where a boring day would be the most unusual thing of all. Thankfully (I think?) that’s not a problem I have to deal with. Then again, I prefer to have something unusual to tell you about; there’s no point in repeating the same things over and over simply because each day is fairly repetitious compared to its predecessors.

The topic that came to mind late this morning did so because of external activity – some of which isn’t my story to tell, so I can’t go into a lot of details, especially with regard to names and places. And indeed, they aren’t names that you would recognize, because people come and go from time to time, and over the past five-plus years, I’ve met and parted with a number of people. If you’ve been keeping an eye on me throughout all this time, like I always ask you to, you might have seen them, but if not, well… there’s no point in writing them down here for the first time.

But in any event, this couple is looking into a place to go for their retirement – or maybe it’s just a case of what’s known as ‘snowbirding,’ as the brutal cold of places like this get to be too much for certain people. Jerry Seinfeld once had a routine about how his parents moved from New York City to Florida; and that they “didn’t want to… but they turned sixty and that’s the law.” Strangely enough, at this point, he still lives in Manhattan, despite being over seventy. Maybe the law has been repealed?

What hasn’t been repealed (and can’t, any more than the laws of gravity, thermodynamics or Murphy) is that we all age, and for some of us, we can’t deal with the cold and the troubles it brings. Lifting a snow shovel is out of the question; even maintaining our balance on icy streets and sidewalks becomes as perilous as a highwire between skyscrapers – and woe betide us should we fall, as a broken hip, painful and debilitating in the best of times, signals the beginning of the inexorable end. Best to avoid those things entirely by getting out of town, and setting up housekeeping in a place where the weather is always warm and friendly (hopefully like the people already there).

As retirement homes go, there are certainly worse places, I suppose.

Of course, the term “retirement home” conjures up a different image for you. You’re probably thinking about places like the Elms, where your Mom put your grandmother up after it became clear she couldn’t stay in Tallmadge on her own any longer. Were you still here, you might recognize its echo in the halls of the rehab center Dad stayed in late in 2023 and early in 2024… and returned to during his final illness earlier this year before coming home for a last few weeks of hospice. It’s the sort of place we showed your parents as a possible future, even as we insisted that they set themselves up with a daily nursing rota at home instead (which you ultimately arranged with Twofeathers’ help once you convinced them that home was better than a home).

We’ve been fortunate in that respect, in that we’ve been able to see to it that our parents were able to spend their final days, months and years at home rather than in one of those institutions. We’ve also been fortunate in that neither set ever considered the idea of moving out and ‘snowbirding,’ but rather stayed relatively close – within walking distance, in my case, and within a reasonable drive for you – rather than setting out halfway across the country. Honestly, I don’t know if that sort of life would have so much as crossed either of our parents’ minds; there’s too much of their lives that had been invested in either Macomb (in your case) or the Chicago suburbs (in mine) to consider uprooting themselves to the warmer climes of Arizona or Florida, in particular.

And it crosses my mind that I’ll probably wind up doing pretty much the same. This place where I keep my ‘office’ is likely to be my home once again some day; partly to keep the house in the family a little longer, as well as to give Daniel space to exist on his own (but still be within reach of me if he needs me), and to give myself space in case Megumi deigns to show up – it wouldn’t do to have her share a house with my grown son. None of this moving elsewhere to be closer to the cruise terminals, or something like that.

Which is weird, because you’ve heard me go on about places I wouldn’t mind building or have built for myself. Whether a semi-pre-fab made out of shipping containers, or taking an akiya (空き家, literally an “empty house”) somewhere in Japan and fixing it up as a pied-à-terre, there are places I might rather consider living in. The latter in particular conjures up the idea of me living as the funny foreigner (because I know I’d never be anything but a gaijin there) in a local neighborhood, who’s always a little awed at the difference in how life operates over there. But when it all comes down, and I have to think reasonably about where I would want to spend my final days (assuming I’m in control of my faculties, both physical and mental), none of that seems practical. I have to stay where I know people and places, and where I can access whatever help I need.

Even switching states – despite the fact that another is barely an hour’s drive in multiple directions – isn’t likely to be in the cards. If nothing else, they’re a little too rural for me (and the urban parts seem to have all the worst of those right here, and less of the better one, I have to say). One way or another, I’m already at the home I expect to retire it – my retirement home, if you will.

All that I’m missing is you.