It has been a decade since I wrote my first LinkedIn post titled When it’s too late to say goodbye. In that article, I lamented the loss of a dear older friend, Dr. Robert Cosbey — the first person who confirmed my vocation as an educator. But by the time I learned of his passing, it was 2 years after the fact.
This sentiment has not changed. In fact, it has only grown stronger with the passing of my eldest sister last year. As a family, we have lost 4 members, and at each funeral we comment that we should not be meeting only at funerals. Awful but true — a depressingly accurate description of the state of affairs.
It is not that our relationships are bad. It’s just that life gets busy — work commitments, life choices, geographical distance — and I am quite confident this is not peculiar to my experience. Because this distracted and incessant busyness is characteristic of our neoliberal world, where we all feel we have to hustle, be productive, and achieve more. All the time. What often gets sacrificed are relationships — be it with nature, others, or self. As I get older, I am more aware that time is not on my side. Too late to say goodbye is ever truer.
This was in part the reason I decided to retire early. I am very grateful that the flexibility of time has afforded me opportunities to spend time with people in new ways.
One recent instance was going on a workaway with my 2 older sisters and brother-in-law. Unlike traditional holidays revolving around visiting tourist sites and eating gourmet meals, the workaway allowed us to work together, solve problems, and discover new experiences as a team. The memories evoked and created were priceless.
For 11 days, we worked on a farm — picking walnuts, harvesting sunflower seeds, clearing the greenhouse, stocking firewood, driving farm machinery, cleaning windows, and making and eating many meals together. And in that time, I saw where my frugality came from. My sister had a growing stack of used paper wipes on the windowsill by the sink, not thrown out. When quizzed about this, she explained that they were to be used later to wipe down the dishes — so it would take less soap and water to wash them. Some values run deep in the family.
Being the youngest of 9 children (yes, no kidding), it was also wonderful to be babied again at 54 — my older siblings would say, “No, it’s okay, you go work on your things. We’ve got this.”
Of course, there were also silly moments — like our dismay when we were told by Ange, our host, that the cleaning cloths for the bathroom follow a strict colour code: “blue for the loo, pink for the sink.” My sister had been using a blue washcloth all week, while I had been using the pink one! Much to our relief, the cabinet held another set of blue-pink rags. Phew!
It has been 42 weeks since I retired, and I have had my fair share of wrestling with the neoliberal demons that whisper I have made a mistake — that I am not being efficient, productive, or making money. But gratefully, I am aware these are just stories, framings that have become commonsense in our world. To be able to say let’s catch up and actually mean it. To show care and receive care in relationships. To know that when someone I love leaves — or when I do — I will not be saying regretfully, “if only,” but chuckling at all the small and sometimes downright silly memories we have shared.
Remember — blue for the loo, pink for the sink!