Joyce Wayne: Retirement Matters

Friendship, both intimate and casual, plays a significant role in overcoming loneliness and illness as we age. The famous most extended longitudinal study of human development, the Harvard Study of Adult Development, which began in 1938 and continued for more than 75 years, explored these basic questions.

Eastwood, who’s enjoyed working with the team at HomeEquity Bank, exclaims, “I am Doris, a woman who knows what she’s doing!” Today Eastwood lives in her own home, a lovely two-bedroom that she’s owned since 1986. On top of acting, she paints and sketches in her home-based artist’s studio and enjoys the company of friends, old and new. She closes our interview by saying, “There’s no room for complacency.”

Aging in place is our number one choice for good reason. Canada’s National Research Council has implemented the Aging in Place Challenge Program, which supports a sustainable model for long term care by shifting the focus toward preventive home and community based care based on four pillars: safety, health, connections and standards.

For so many these days, a one-career life is no longer the norm. Many older Canadians who have retired —or been retired —retain loads of energy and are searching for something to do.

The challenge facing Canada is to try to ensure that the doses of COVID-19 fighting vaccines arrive in the country according to schedule and that the provinces distribute them quickly and efficiently. If so, Canadians could be looking at a much brighter summer than expected.

On that 1966 Saturday night in Detroit, gas was 39 cents a gallon, a pack of cigarettes about double. A Coney Island hotdog (a downtown Detroit specialty) covered with chili sauce, yellow mustard and chopped onions was less than three bucks. Both cities, Windsor and Detroit, were booming, riding the immense wave of the post-World War II culture based on fast cars, endless cheap oil reserves, big unions, burgeoning wages and the opportunity to make good if you worked hard and played fair.

We’ve all been waiting for good news about vaccinations, and now it’s finally here. The wait has been more arduous for some than others. Older adults are particularly hard hit by the pandemic, both those living in their own homes who are self-isolating, and more so for those living in long-term care facilities.

Being members of the older generation, we’ve learned not to complain or at least not to complain too much. On the weekly Zoom happy hour call with our friends my age, we try not to focus on our ailments or aches and pains. Still, we inevitably fall into rehashing our worries about illnesses during each virtual get-together. That’s what happens after turning 65.

In his new book Retirement Heaven or Hell: Which Will You Choose? Mike Drak describes what he calls “the three stages of retirement” and how to escape from the second stage: Retirement Hell.

I worry about them, and by extension other Millennials. Just as they are beginning to put down roots, develop their careers and basically decide what kind of life they wish to lead, the rug has been pulled out from under them. When we talk about the future, it’s difficult for them to see their future, how they will work, support themselves and possibly raise children together.