“Do you have a grandfather?” asked my second-grade classmate Gillian as we walked up the dusty track to the horse corral.
“Yes,” I replied. “He’s retired.”
“You mean he’s dead?”
“No…”
Recent experience has confirmed my childhood understanding that retirement is not the same thing as death. Though some may find it comparable.
The very notion of retirement was born of the modern social welfare systems developed in Europe and later in the United States. While country dwellers generally worked as long as they could, government workers in the cities, as well as company employees and factory laborers, could obtain an old-age pension if they lived long enough. Social Security was introduced in the U.S. in 1935.
Today, however, the concept of retirement has changed. Often, the prospect of a meager pension combines with the high cost of living and the fear of unanticipated expenses to prompt one to delay retirement – sometimes indefinitely. Many Americans find themselves having to work until they drop.
Retirement no longer means that one stops working in order to lie on the couch, travel, play golf – or spend all day at the computer forwarding nostalgic ruminations, cranky diatribes about the decline of civilization, and jokes about dementia, decrepitude and gastrointestinal disorders. Some, instead, having left their employers and obtained their pensions, still work part-time or as self-employed independent contractors. Many can thus delay receiving Social Security payments in order to obtain a higher amount later. The concept of a “working retirement” has taken root.
An aging population, partly the result of advances in medicine, means that retirees are a growing breed. To some extent, this is good news for Ukrainian diaspora organizations, which have mostly relied on volunteers. True, the economic pressures of the last few decades may have reduced the number of individuals available for community work. But a larger number of retirees or semi-retirees with time on their hands should mean more volunteers for our social, cultural, scholarly and political organizations.
Because retirement usually means a reduced income, and because maintaining a household requires a certain level of strength and energy, many retirees downsize, moving from houses to rental apartments or condominiums. Perhaps because an aging metabolism generates less heat, many of these opt for warmer places like North Port, Fla. During the winter, Florida is quite temperate. And it is perfectly comfortable during the summer, too – unless you should decide to venture outdoors.
What places like North Port offer is community. Perhaps as we age, we are drawn to the primeval Ukrainian village, where everyone knows everyone’s business and there is no shortage of gossip. This is quite normal, though the principal difference between a retirement community and a traditional village – the presence in the latter of the young and middle-aged – is crucial. For while it is comforting to be surrounded by people of one’s own vintage, it may be healthier to live in a generationally diversified milieu.
Few pensioners in Ukraine have the luxury of choosing where to retire. Most, it seems, just sit in their apartments. But spending one’s final years among one’s own people can be psychologically comforting. For the religiously inclined, a parish community offers fellowship. A widowed aunt of mine has found her parish in Lviv to be friendly, generous and supportive. She has joined her fellow parishioners on pilgrimages to Zarvanytsia, Lourdes and even the Holy Land. They frequently drop by to help out or just visit.
Some diasporans, in fact, have found that retiring in Ukraine is not a bad idea, especially as the dollar still goes a long way. My aunt sold her condominium in Miami Beach to return to Lviv. The winter may be harsh, but mosquitoes are fewer, and you are not likely to find an alligator grinning on your doorstep.
Inevitably, many who live to retirement will suffer chronic or terminal illness. They and their children may face the painful choice between institutional and home care. The traditional Ukrainian approach, of course, is home care, which offers immeasurable psychological comfort. In these times, however, few adults can afford to stay home to care for an elder, even if they resolve to live on a reduced income. Some types of illness, like dementia, require specialized care. Moreover, elderly people need an accident-preventive living space. This may require extensive retrofitting. Thus, recruiting your cousin from Ukraine may not be the solution. And a live-in professional care-giver is not always available, or even adequate.
The alternative – institutional care – comes in an increasing variety of forms, from assisted living to skilled nursing and, ultimately, hospice care. This usually means a culturally alien social environment, for the chances of encountering other Ukrainians in an adult care facility are minimal. It is only natural, in one’s final years, to crave one’s people, language and culture.
It was, therefore, encouraging to read about the expansion of St. Joseph’s Adult Care Home in Sloatsburg, N.Y., to include assisted living (“The Ukrainian Weekly,” March 13). The Sisters Servants of Mary Immaculate are providing an important service to our community, and it is in our interest to support them. Such facilities offer spiritually comforting and culturally familiar surroundings.
In the much-maligned Middle Ages, hospitals were constructed so as to afford each bedridden patient a view of the altar of a central chapel. The Hotel Dieu at Beaune, France, is a famous example (similarly, the ailing Philip II of Spain could follow the mass from his bed at the monastery palace of El Escorial). Physical discomfort aside – a single bed might accommodate several patients – the sick and the dying must have found much solace in this arrangement.
Modern American hospitals offer comfort and hygiene, but not a Ukrainian Catholic or Orthodox environment. Those eligible for assisted living, however, will likely find that a home like St. Joseph’s provides care for the soul as well as for the body. There should be more of them.