I have been retired for eight and a half years now. In some ways it does not seem that long because of unfortunate circumstances.
I retired on September 6th, 2013 in no small part because of health. For the first year or so, that kept me down.
In the fall of 2014, Sandy and I went on an adventure of what turned out to be our lifetime. We went to visit a friend in Texas. We went in our motorhome. To be honest with you, to this day I do not know how long we were gone but it must have been about 6 weeks.
When we got back, we had such a great time we bought a new motorhome because the one we had wasn’t cutting it. As normal, we took it into the shop for warranty work in February. Little did we know it would take them 6 months. We only got a few little trips in that year.
Then that fall, Sandy got kidney failure. By that Christmas (2015) she was on dialysis. At first I took her to treatments, often waiting at the center until she finished 3-1/2 hours or so later.
Soon, we started doing hone dialysis where I was the ”caregiver”. Now home dialysis, from setup to finish, takes at least 5 hours. At first, Sandy did the initial 1/2 hour but, as time went on, I did all of the setup and breakdown except for her entering her numbers (weight, temperature, blood pressure, goal weight, etc.).
The only time we did not do home dialysis was when we were living in our motorhome waiting for our new house to be built.
Thus it seemed that I had a job. I was in charge of Sandy’s dialysis 4 days a week. In the last couple of years, I also ferried her back and forth to various medical appointments as she became frailer.
She has been gone for more than six months now. I have done a few things, but not much. The situation with Covid-19 compounds a lot of options. Truth be told though, I haven’t done much with my hobbies after an initial spurt to ”make myself busy”.
I know I have to figure out where I go from here and just what my life is going to from here on out. Essentially, what my retirement is now that Sandy isn’t here to share it with me. Truth is, I have no damned idea what it is going to be and I am not sure I am ready.
