A few times in your life you are lucky to meet someone who can best be described as a force of nature.  My mother-in-law, Peg Lawlor, was such a person.  As we recognize the one year anniversary of her passing, I wanted to share a little of her with you and the impact she continues to have on me. 

I met my wife, Trish, not quite five years ago after a lifetime of searching.  How we met is a story for another time, but suffice to say that we met, and when we did my life changed immeasurably for the better.  I had considered myself a “fully formed” person by the time I hit my 50’s, yet Trish opened up an entire world to me that I didn’t even know I wanted.  She had a close group of long time friends and an extended family that was both physically and emotionally close.  But no one in this group taught me more about the importance of family (both blood and chosen) than her Mom, Peg.

Meeting Peg was by far the most angst-inducing part of the process of integrating into Trish’s life.  Not that the rest of it was easy!  The members of her “posse”, a group of wonderful down to earth and embracing people, each pulled me aside one by one to basically threaten me with dismemberment if I mistreated this woman who meant so much to them.  Her two sisters, brother, attendant spouses and nine nieces and nephews essentially descended upon me en masse to check me out.  Keep in mind that I come from a small, very quiet southern family.  My head just about exploded trying to keep track of who-knows-how-many gregarious, story-telling, everyone-talking-at-once Irish Philadelphians.

I sensed, though, that meeting Peg—the matriarch of this clan—was going to be a critical step.  Knowing that she was a fellow scotch drinker, I made sure to pick up a bottle of her favorite label before our introduction (just the three of us).  I don’t think Trish knew how nervous I was.  But I didn’t need to be.  I felt folded into her metaphorical embrace from the moment we met.  And also from the moment we met, I knew someone very special had just come into my life.

The family would get together regularly, be it for holidays, birthdays or just because.  Peg held court wherever and whenever we were together.   She inherited a wicked story telling gene from her father and while she clearly passed it on to her offspring, she was still the best.  She would hold us in rapt attention and laughing in stitches every time.  I learned to restrict fluids whenever going to one of these gatherings.  (Any post-menopausal woman reading this essay will get that reference!)

All the grandkids wanted to hear GrandMarge (she didn’t want to be called Grandma) tell stories.  For Peg, this was a critical way of keeping family lore intact and establishing that critical family bond across the generations.  And thanks to a turn of luck, I got to spend a good amount of one-on-one time with this amazing woman during the last few years of her life. 

Life was clearly sending me a signal toward the end of June in 2016.  Over the span of just one week, Trish and I combined households, my old home sold, and I lost my job.  As I looked to transition to retirement, I took on a bit of regular “Peg” responsibility since I had the time during the week.  Every Wednesday, I would take Peg to the hairdresser, run a few errands for her and usually grocery shop.  This was one-on-one time for us and gave us the chance to really talk.  I will treasure those Wednesdays with Peg for the rest of my life.

We talked about a lot of things, but most often family.  I learned about her father, how important family was to him and how he ingrained that thinking into his children.  She told me so many stories about when her kids were young, summers in the Poconos, all the trouble they (ok, especially Trish) would get into and the blessing that her grandchildren had been.  Knowing that she was nearing the end of her days on this earth, we talked a lot about how important it was to her that her children and grandchildren carry on that family closeness.  It wasn’t about her.  It was about passing on the richness of those connections and the security of that familial embrace.  Look, life was not perfect.  There were times of stress and discord.  She would agonize whenever any of her kids weren’t getting along, but knew she couldn’t interfere.  “They are going to have to work things out once I’m gone,” she’d say. “I know they will work through it now.”  She had provided the example and push during their younger lives.

But it was more than these discussions of family.  It was that sense I would get during our time together of feeling strongly connected and cared for by someone I also cared for deeply.  I struggle over the words, here, because this was such a unique relationship for me.  She made me feel special just by spending time with me.  We would verbally spar and tease each other.  She would ask my thoughts just as often as I asked for hers.  She brought me into this fabulous world that revolved around her (although she never noticed how much people wanted to be around her).

I know members of my own birth family are reading this essay and I don’t want them to feel that I have absorbed my in-laws to the exclusion of them.  On the contrary, the lessons I’ve learned from Peg have caused me to pull closer to them.  Everyone has been up here to visit (as well as at our wedding) and I think they each understand what I mean when I talk about the uniqueness of this family.  Peg taught me to value every member of my family more deeply and try to understand them and engage with them in a way that will continue to strengthen bonds.  The distance is hard, but we’re trying (with varying degrees of success).

Peg suffered through a long and painful decline.  It took its toll on the family and strained relationships at times.  Her passing hit all of us hard.  But at the luncheon after her funeral, dozens of friends and extended family members laughed and drank and told stories until the wee hours.  (I didn’t last until the wee hours, but I heard tell.)  We even passed a microphone around so all could share in the laughs.  And now, about a year later, I know Peg is with us whenever we get together in fours or eights or a dozen or more.  We laugh, we love.  We share minutia, we back each other during difficult times.

That legacy that was so important to Peg, even though she didn’t see it as her legacy, lives on and will continue to live on through her kids and grandkids, cousins and spouses, and even various hangers-on that so want to be a part of this magic.  I was so blessed to know this woman and be embraced by this family.  What I will be forever most grateful for, though, were those Wednesdays with Peg.

This essay is my last installment (for now) on the process I’ve identified for transitioning into retirement.  The first two essays in this series described that process and explored the first three steps in detail.  Today, I’m going to take you through the last two steps and leave you with some final thoughts on this exciting time in your life.

When we last left our riveting story, I was struggling with what to do with my time once I had detoxed from thirty years of intense work and had enjoyed months of stress-free endless vacation time.  Alas, all good things must come to an end and I started to get “rutchey” (for those of you who don’t know Pennsylvania Dutch, it means I got “shpilkes”).  One of the first forays I made into “doing something that means something” was reaching out to a local woman’s college and offering myself to their Chemistry Department.  I wanted to mentor young women going into the sciences, giving them the benefit of my years of hard won wisdom.  At first, they were thrilled.  But since I brought the idea to them instead of being “recruited”, the responsibility to define the nature of engagement fell to me.  I gave a presentation to their upper classmen, who clearly did NOT get my humor and didn’t know what to do with me. The professors really only wanted me to get them free help to fix and maintain analytical instruments.  Over a fairly short period of time, I got tired of the hour drive up to the Valley and definitely tired of the effort required on my part to gain acceptance.  I felt like I was pushing myself on them and had already spent too many years pushing, pushing, pushing to advance in my career.  No, this wasn’t what I wanted.  Not now.  So, I stopped showing up and they didn’t seem to care.

Could I have made a real difference there?  Absolutely.  I could have spent a lot more time on campus and developed a detailed structure to guide my interactions with students, faculty and staff.  With time and persistence, I could have built a place for myself there that I know would have made a difference for them and for me.  And, in fact, they did ask if I’d consider being an adjunct professor and teach some lab sections.  (Trish and I were starting to travel more and I wasn’t about to make a commitment to a semester of teaching that would curtail that!)  But this wasn’t the Catharsis I was looking for.  I took on a few short consulting gigs that basically involved me pontificating on the phone and getting paid $250 an hour.  THAT I really enjoyed!  But, again, I was happy letting those opportunities come to me instead of searching them out and marketing my knowledge. 

Then I got a phone call from the President of an industry group that I’d been involved in for years.  I was even serving on their Board of Directors when I left Intertek.  The request was to come on board as a Project Manager of an initiative that I had championed when I was on the Board.  I was really excited about the topic!  I said No.  He called again.  I said No again.  Just as a rabbi makes you knock on the door a third time as a way of demonstrating commitment before you can convert to Judaism, I waited for that third call.  Trish encouraged me to go visit them and give it a hard look.  She could see the passion in my eyes and hear it in my voice.  She knew this was something I wanted to do.  I had reached Stage Four:  Catharsis.

I signed a one year contract and over that time was able to advance a passion around Innovation Leadership training into a reality.  Did everything go perfectly?  Emphatically no.  Did I achieve all I wanted to achieve in that time period?  No again.  But, boy, did I enjoy that year!  I reconnected with a number of people whom I really respected and enjoyed being with.  They validated that I still had solid ideas and perspectives which was quite healing.  (I was even presented with about a half dozen job opportunities, should I have wished to have gotten back into an industrial position.)  And, I put together a product that I felt fulfilled my vision on what this educational tool should do.  I even recruited my successor.  That year of contract work was exactly what I needed.  But the one year was enough.  I had entered a New Normal (Stage 5) but that didn’t mean it was permanent. 

There certainly are people who go through this cycle once and embrace a New Normal that will last the rest of their lives.  That is awesome but it is not my story.  I lost my energy around the topic of Innovation Leadership which had been a part of my life for so long. Once I handed over project leadership I went right back into Detox.  Did I consider this a failure?  No, not by a long shot.  I realized that this cycle of transition is going to continue for the rest of my life.  I know I’m still growing, learning and evolving.  For thirty years, that happened in the context of an industrial career.  I changed position and focus multiple times over that period.  Now I’m a freelancer and those changes will happen outside of the umbrella of a single context.

A lot of changes have already happened over the time since I left Intertek.  I moved.  I got married.  I integrated into my tight family of in-laws.  I began to travel.  I got onto a sharp growth curve, this one more personal than professional.  My desire to write began to build again.  I had written a piece about my old synagogue that was published a decade ago and the impact of that essay was brought home to me again last year. I went to the Bat Mitzvah of the young girl at the center of that story.  The Rabbi read my essay as his message to her and it brought back to me the joy I got from writing.  Then last fall was that horrendous mass shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh.  It affected me more than I realized and an essay came pouring out.  I posted it on Facebook.  The response I got was unexpected and blew me away.  I could reach people with my words.  It’s something I’ve always wanted to do.  Now was the time to try it.

That was my most recent Catharsis and led to the creation of this blog.  I have thoroughly enjoyed the process thus far and am under no illusion that I will become a viral sensation.  (Although, Oprah, if you’d like to talk with me about my thoughts I’m easily reachable.)  I also know that this is not my last cycle through the Five Stages of Transitioning to Retirement.  At some point, the need to grow will push me again.  I have no idea what direction I might move toward and I’m excited to find out!  I know I am blessed to have the means to let this process lead me where it may.  And I am doubly blessed to have all of you join me on this journey!

In my last essay, Transitioning to Retirement (Part I), I introduced you to my five step process for managing the abrupt change from work into retirement.  Those five steps are: Detox, Endless Vacation, What Day is it?, Catharsis and The New Normal.  After a brief description of each of those stages, I dove a bit deeper into Detox.  Today, we are going to tackle the next two steps:  Endless Vacation and What Day is it?  The first is probably the most enjoyable time you will ever have in your life.  The second will be one of the most disconcerting. 

As you may remember, the timing of my move into retirement was not exactly of my own choosing.  That sort of intensity change, from 110 miles per hour to about zero overnight, can leave you numb and at a bit of a loss for what to do when your eyes open in the morning.  I was lucky in that I saw my probable unemployment coming for several months and had some time to prepare (if not anticipate).  My Detox time really only lasted a couple of weeks and even that may be generous.  I was just done.  That last year was so exhausting and mentally debilitating, and I was close enough to my planned retirement year, that I just said “enough”.  I knew I wasn’t going back to full time work.

As luck would have it, I was “retired” in late June.  I still woke up with the early morning sun, but now my days stretched in front of me with glorious…..glorious……What is the word I’m looking for?  Not laziness, although there was plenty of that.  Not nothingness, because it wasn’t that either.  Leisure!  Glorious leisure!  Think about those times you had a long weekend, like Memorial Day or maybe July 4^th.  Maybe you tacked on a few extra days and stretched it into a week or so.  Maybe you went to the shore or the mountains.  Maybe you just stayed home.  But you looked in front of you and thought, “Wow.  I have X days to just live before I have to go back to work!”  Then that time just sped by and before you knew it, there was that pit in your stomach.  “I’d better check e-mail, just to know what’s waiting for me.”  You start thinking about what you know is coming up and then about what might be coming up and then you start thinking about some of the people you’ll have to deal with and….it’s over.

It’s fitting that I started drafting this essay while in Aruba for a week.  Those weeks in Aruba over the years (yes, some people actually LIKE their timeshares) were wonderful and tragic at the same time.  Lying in the sun, feeding lettuce to iguanas, reading for pleasure…all gave me a taste of what “it” could be like.  This time, though, the end of the trip brought no additional sadness beyond missing those iguanas.  OK, some frustration at the lines for immigration and the 45 minutes it took PHL to unload the luggage, but Monday just brought a return to spin class.  Painful as that was after a week off, it was still enjoyable!

So, what will you do during your Endless Vacation phase?  Depends on your personality and your “if I only had time” list.  For me, it was taking long walks on local trails, reading for pleasure, and taking naps.  (Although I quickly learned that I was not allowed to take naps in view of Trish when she was working from home.)  For others, it might be cleaning out the garage or tackling the yard or going to see friends you haven’t seen in ages.  The key to the Endless Vacation stage is that whatever you do, you are doing it for pleasure.  While most of us need a sense of purpose at some level, that does not apply to this wondrous phase.  You will (hopefully) just do whatever you want to do.  Allow yourself this time.  You’ve earned it, darn it.  And if you jump too quickly into something too demanding, guess what?  You’ll just end up back in Detox.  A note to those of you that do end up moving into a different yet demanding responsibility after you retire, such as caring for an aging parent or taking on a consulting role or going back for another degree.  You haven’t retired; you’ve simply moved on to another job.  Your Detox and Endless Vacation will come later, maybe never if you enjoy being that busy (or are required to be that busy).  I do recognize that what I’m describing will be seen by many as a luxury.  I hope you all get to enjoy it at some point.

When do you know when Endless Vacation has come to an end?  I don’t remember exactly when this happened (and that should be a clue), but it was warm enough for me to be wearing shorts and for us to be sitting outside.  I had met a good friend from my Air Products days, along with her husband, for lunch.  They had moved out of town when she retired and were coming back to the area for a visit.  That morning, knowing that I had a real activity on my calendar, I showered early and put on “going out” khaki shorts and a real shirt.  I was excited!  I met “Mary” and “Chuck” at a favorite nearby restaurant and we had a wonderful time catching up.  We talked about retiring and how our lives had changed.  We laughed about how things that we used to fit into lunch hours or after work on the way home, had become the entire focus of a day.  As we wound up our time together and rose to say goodbye, Chuck asked me what else I was planning on doing that day.  I hesitated a second.  Then said, “I met you two for lunch!  Isn’t that enough?” 

As I drove home, exhausted by having been out for several hours and actually interacting with people, I thought to myself, “Sherri, I think you need something a little more engaging in your life.”  Endless Vacation was ending.  I was entering the realm of What Day is it?  I had been waking up in the morning not knowing what day it was because I had no schedule.  At first it was liberating.  Then it became a little frightening.  When I started Endless Vacation, I had looked forward to just sitting in one of our many reading chairs and reading for hours, meandering through the pile of books I had bought over the years and still wanted to read.  But now, an hour or so of reading is enough. Endless Vacation meant I could look forward to taking long walks every day.  But now after that long walk there was a lot of not moving and much snacking.  At the start of Endless Vacation I was able to take naps whenever I wanted!  But now I was falling asleep after going grocery shopping.  I had gotten bored.

It was time to start thinking about how I wanted my daily life to evolve.  Instead of planning for the future, I’m finally living in the present.  So, what does that look like for me?  How much of a time commitment did I want to make to something?  To an organization?  To an activity?  What could I get lost in?  What would be the output of this “something” and what would I do with it?  I honestly hadn’t given much thought to my post-full-time-work life except that I wanted to travel.  And even that raised questions:  Where?  Why?  I’m a goal oriented, outcome driven person.  What did that mean in my “retirement”?  As I noodled on these questions I tried some ideas out in “thought experiments” and rejected one after another.  Then I got a phone call that led to my first Catharsis.  We’ll pick up on that next time!

In the late 1960’s, Swiss psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross published On Death and Dying, in which she described the five stages of grief:  Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance.  I became familiar with this theory a decade later when the 99¢ theatre I worked at in high school (yes, that was a thing and yes, I’m that old) showed Roy Scheider in All That Jazz. The film’s climax involves the lead character going through these five stages with much music, drama and “jazz hands”.

Anyway, the thesis I would like to present over the next few essays is that, similar to the grieving process (in more ways than one), there are five stages of transitioning into retirement.  You MUST progress through all five, in order.  Residence time in each stage will depend upon your unique situation.  Recycling is allowed.  Herewith, the five stages that we will explore:

1. Detox, in which our protagonist does basically nothing (except a little drooling) to allow the trauma of the workplace to leave the system;
2. Endless Vacation, in which our hero finally realizes that there is no pit in the stomach on Sunday nights, begins to relax, and starts doing all those things on the “when I retire” list.  Note that this particular list is not filled with admirable things like “giving back” or “producing something of value”.  This list includes “sleeping as late as I want”, “exercising whenever I want; or not”, “making an entire day out of going to the bank” and other low stress activities.
3. What Day is it? when our central character suddenly realizes that, um, maybe a little structure in my life is a good thing.
4. Catharsis, in which our star sifts through the possibilities of “things I want to do” that are a bit more constructive, tries a few on for size, and finds something that actually feels good.
5. The New Normal, in which our champion finishes the transition to retirement—for the time being.  Note that you are allowed to cycle through these steps as many times as you’d like, as you tire of whatever “new normal” you’ve settled upon.

So, let’s take a leisurely stroll through these stages.  I’ll use my own experience as an example, of course, along with those of others I know.  Identities will be lightly disguised as necessary since I don’t really plan to ask people permission to write about them.

Stage 1:  Detox

Everyone must go through detox!  There will be temptation to hurry through.  Don’t do it.  You NEED this time.  If you rush into something right away because you feel you should be busy, you will just delay detox until you DO finally sit still.  There is most likely a direct correlation between stress level in the job and needed detox time—and an inverse correlation with level of preparedness for what comes next.  Sit there and drool.  Walk in the woods.  Binge watch Game of Thrones.  Let your brain do what it needs to do.  A lucky few people will have found their passion early enough to make it their career.  Most of us find a career first and our passion only comes to the surface later.  Let it come. 

Everyone has their own detox story.  The first I’ll share is from a colleague I’ll call “David”.   David was about a decade older than me and someone who I always felt was too nice for someone so senior in the organization.  We’d have business lunches together, but rarely talk about business.  When he reached “Rule of 80,” I asked him why he didn’t retire right then.  (Rule of 80 was a benefit wherein if you were 55 and had at least 25 years of service, you could retire and start pulling your full pension right away.  It was my dream to reach Rule of 80 at 55.)  He said, “Once I hit the KMA [Kiss My Ass] Day, I realized I could walk anytime I wanted and my stress level immediately dropped.  I decided I’d stay a bit longer.”  David had a LOT of volunteer activities going on outside of work:  with his church, at a local fishing lake,  with Engineers without Borders, etc.  When he did finally retire, he said to me, “Well, it finally got to the point that I just didn’t have time to work anymore.”  I’m guessing David’s detox time was about as long as his drive home.

At the other end of the spectrum was “Steve”.  At the time I let Steve go, I was managing a support organization within Air Products and our budget was funded by the businesses.  We sold a business and I needed to let one headcount go to account for that loss of budget.  I hated firing people.  My fire to hire ratio at Air Products was about 30:1 because of the difficult times (remember the Great Recession?).  Steve had been roaming the halls for years, loudly stating that he wanted “a package”.  This meant a healthy severance check as he walked out the door.  Steve was entirely retirement eligible and his primary role was supporting the business that had just been sold.  This would be the easiest firing I’d ever done!  On the day Steve was brought to my office, I launched into the perfunctory business case.  The look on his face—you would have thought I’d just killed his dog!  Then he lost his temper and yelled at me for 10 minutes on how loyal an employee he’d been!  I was stunned.  Turns out, Steve wasn’t ready.  He hadn’t thought about what was next for him much less considered the need to detox.  He wanted to work until he didn’t and THEN he wanted that package.  I sped up his timing and it shook him.  I’m guessing Steve’s detox took months. 

My situation was somewhere between those two.  I started thinking about retirement about a nanosecond after I started working.  Don’t get me wrong—I had a great career with many satisfying achievements and good memories.  I was focused on what I needed to do in whatever role I was in, cognizant of the number of people depending upon me to do a good job.  However, if I hit the lottery, my resignation letter would have been on my boss’ desk the next day.  I’m not one of those people who, supposedly, “never worked a day in [their] life!” because they so loved what they did.  I worked and I worked hard.  For a long time.  And from the beginning, I planned my finances so that, should I choose at the time, I could retire when I turned 55.  This dream was strongly reinforced in my 40’s as colleagues I was close to started to reach that milestone and march off into the sunset.  I would meet them for lunch or dinner occasionally and see how much happier and younger they looked, hear about their adventures, and generally be pissed off that I still had 10 years to go.

I lost my job when I was about a year away from turning 55.  I saw it coming.  I was not heartbroken.  But it was still a shock when it DID happen.  I came home that day with a shell shocked grin (if that can happen).  My detox took a couple of weeks, on and off.

When will you know you’ve had enough time to detox?  Well, the best way I can describe it is that you’ll wake up one morning and suddenly realize you are seeing in color again.  Then it’s time to move on to Stage 2:  Endless Vacation.  We’ll pick up on that next time.