A Fracture in Life

The gift of pain and the retirement scam

The other day, I heard a phrase that I can’t forget.

A fracture in your life.

It refers to when something so painful occurs and causes such a dramatic shift in your life that it is a gift.

For me, that moment was losing my mom in 2020.

Grief is a complicated web of emotions – especially losing a parent you’re close to and especially when it’s your mom. My mom was my lifeline and my anchor. Whenever life was uncertain or hard, I could count on her to right the ship or recalibrate my emotions.

Mama was ill for a long time. Her death came as no surprise to anyone. But when that phone call finally came – the one our family had been waiting to receive for years – it was still a shock to our systems. If ever there was a powerful yet quiet matriarch, it was her. My husband used to say she walked softly with a big stick – a reference to that quiet power. Her death left us with a hole in the family fabric, which was already quite small.

We muddled through and figured out how to move on without my mom. My brother continued to hold Thanksgiving and Christmas at his house, giving us all somewhere to gather. Life moved on. The grief became easier to hold. But it never really left.

Mama passed away a few days shy of her 70th birthday. Some people are still working at that age, healthy and spry, and living out their golden years in style. It made me angry. And then it made me question.

In the United States, we are all taught to save for retirement, work hard, and then, around 60 or 65 years old, stop working and “retire” and enjoy all the fruits of our labor. Retirement is the pinnacle that allows you to finally take off as much time as you want. You can go wherever you want. Your money is finally yours to do as you wish, with kids done with school and out of the nest.

But what if retirement never comes?

And if it does come, what if you no longer have health? Or die soon after you retire?

We’ve all heard these stories. They’re morbid, sure, but they happen. Someone retires at 65, and then just six months later, they get cancer or have a heart attack, and they’re gone. Or, in Mama’s case, you are forced to retire because you have Parkinson’s disease (later complicated by chronic lymphocytic leukemia).

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

As the time approached for her retirement from teaching, Mama talked a lot about what she would do. She wanted a fun job, like being a door greeter at her local Walmart or helping at the library. She’d spend the rest of her time hanging with her grandkids and working on her house and yard. Like all of us, she had dreams for her retirement.

As I thought about my mom’s death and what her legacy would be, I realized that we are not promised tomorrow. Mama was always a healthy person. She exercised, ate well, stayed slender her entire life, never smoked, never drank, and remained active until she could no longer do so – the epitome of what our doctors want us all to be. If someone like that could die before the age of 70, what chance do the rest of us have?

The conclusion I came to is that retirement is kind of a scam.

We work our whole lives hoping for a few good years at the end of our lives to do what we’ve always wanted to do. We’re chasing the dangling carrot; we might catch it, but the odds are good that it will always be out of reach.

Life is happening now. You can always make more money, but you can never, ever make more time. We may not have a fat investment portfolio when Will and I retire, but we will have enough.

My mom’s death was the fracture in my life that opened my eyes to how we were living, what we were chasing, and what we value. We learned that we don’t value “stuff” nearly as much as we value experiences. Except for some sentimental items, I don’t miss anything we left in storage in the States. In the end, almost everything is replaceable.

Our experiences, though … those are irreplaceable.