Continuing the previous conversation…

The only other time I ever heard the big “T” (as in Tired) word spoken filled with that much unspoken meaning, as I referred to in the previous post, the word was spoken by my mother, dying of lung cancer.

“I’m tired,” she said, in a way that expressed not despair or resentment, but peaceful resignation to reaching finite limitations—of being truly exhausted—and knowing it!

“I’m tired,” she said, not apologizing for her resignation, but expressing a calm, reasoned, and honest explanation to why she was looking forward to joining her husband and other family members who had predeceased her.

(Unless death comes quickly/unexpectedly to me, I imagine someday I will know my mother’s kind of tiredness, also.)

For now, I am getting un-tired, grateful that there is no immediate trauma or difficulty that keeps me from unwinding; grateful for the chance to be renewed in strength; grateful for a chance to live a different kind of life on the other side of the retirement date milestone, until I am called to account for this life and to enter into a different kind of living retirement.

And I am grateful, too, that my mother, who worried that I worked too hard, is part of this retirement decision—I am confident of that!

On a day that was chosen for me (not by me), the first steps toward fructifying my decision to retire took place at a counseling retirement meeting on the sixth anniversary of my mother’s natural release from the tiredness of this life.

I believe that in the heavenly economy, retirement, like on this side of heaven, doesn’t mean an absence of work, but a different kind of work. I believe my mother is still at work in my life.

Providential. Reassuring. I believe I’m on the right path. Forty-three days and counting down to retirement.