Taking Retirement: A Beginner's Diary

Christian Century, April 12, 2000 by Jerry K. Robbins

Taking Retirement: A Beginner's Diary. By Carl H. Klaus. Beacon, 256 pp., $25.00.

ARE YOU OLD?" a little boy asked as he popped up in the pool beside me. Hoping that his vision merely had been blurred by the spray and not wanting to admit my age, I tossed off his question by replying, "I didn't think my backstroke was that bad." He paddled away muttering, "You must be crazy."

Perhaps I was. At the time I was on the brink of retirement from a long career as a campus minister, and I had every reason to be happy about the future. My career was ending on a positive note. My personal finances were in order. My wife, Alice, and I were planning a trip. I had plenty of good, self-chosen work lined up to keep me busy. I had a hobby. I could look forward to the company of retired friends and to sharing relaxed lunches with my wife.

But I was not happy. Talk of my replacement made me feel unneeded and unwanted. I knew that I would miss my office and the work-day contact with other people. As my mail and phone calls slowed to a trickle, I felt isolated. My desk calendar stopped recording--and reminding me of--my accomplishments. The changes in my routine made me fidgety.

And I worried about the ominous things that happened during the two weeks before my retirement date: a driver ran into my car and totaled it; our dishwasher, garbage disposal and computer broke down; a manuscript I had submitted for publication was rejected; and my doctor, his face drawn in a frown, told me I had to come in for tests.

Obviously, I needed help. Cast upon the turbulent waters of a major life transition, what would help me keep my head above water? Retirement savvy didn't come any more naturally to me than learning how to read, write and do arithmetic had when I was a child. Then I had had to learn the three r's; now I had to learn a fourth one. Carl Klaus's Taking Retirement appeared just in time to help.

Klaus is a professor of English, founder of the Iowa Institute of Writing, and author of numerous books. As I read his journal, I had the uncanny feeling that he was telling my life story as well as his own. Like him, I had worked for many years in a university setting, more than 30 of them in the same place. Like him, I had heart problems and had dealt with professional tribulations and writer's angst. Like him, I had a supportive and sensible wife, had dabbled in doing stand-up comedy and had enjoyed and developed a hobby. I identified with his retirement activities: working on his finances, vacating his office, reminiscing as he went through his files, planning a retirement trip and getting a new laptop computer. He records emotional ups and downs that mirrored my own. When he noted that retirement is worse than a heart operation because there is no bypass for it, he expressed the pain I was feeling.

I spent a great deal of time during my final days at my job worrying that I would not be able actually to retire. When I put up my sign saying "retirement" everyone seemed to read it as "available." I had a dozen invitations to undertake a variety of projects, almost all having to do with the work I thought I was leaving behind. Klaus documents a similar process and his struggle to say, "Enough!" At first he perceived these professional connections as comforting handles with which to hold on to the familiar, but soon they began to get in the way of his new interests--gardening, traveling, writing, cooking and just spending leisurely time at home.

Although I wanted to throw off all the work my job involved, I didn't want to give up the keys to my office. This familiar place comforted me. It seemed to bring order to my new life, a life which felt dangerously without anchors. My office was like a secure spaceship saving me from drifting meaninglessly into the great void of retirement.

Klaus's book assured me he had experienced the same thing, only more so. Not only the space but also the daily contacts with students, colleagues and the mail seemed critical to him. He felt rejected when his request for office space was denied. He rejoiced when he was given a place in the emeritus wing. Then, over the months, as his interest in other things developed, he realized the foolishness of his desire to hold on to the things of the past. I, too, am now getting along quite nicely without my old office, thanks to my new office at home. Reading Klaus's account of the drudgery of moving his boxes of books and files helped me through a similar process.

Identity problems plagued my crossover into retirement. When I was working I knew who I was. My robe defined my role. I had a title: "PR" or "Pastor Robbins" or "Reverend." When the final retirement reception came (an event to "draw the line," says Klaus), I was shorn of those titles. People still used them, but they had become meaningless. Klaus repeatedly laments his loss of identity; he wonders, "Who am I anyway?" Although he previously had reinvented himself through three or four career modifications, he was not ready for the psychological impact of losing his title when he retired.