A “Senior” at Last

Remember when you were in high school, and you could hardly wait until you would be a senior? The seniors were the ones with all the privileges, the ones who never let the underclass students forget who was at the top of the student body. And when you finally got there, remember what a great feeling it was? You were one of the top dogs! You had more freedom, more power, more privilege than the lowly freshmen and sophomores, and even the up-and-coming juniors. And it was so worth waiting for.

Well, that’s the way I feel now about being a senior citizen. I’ve finally made it to the top, and the wait and the struggle were worth it! I’m free of all the restrictions of a daily job and time schedules. I’m my own boss. The children are safely on their own. I can read the books I’ve always wanted to read; I can go for walks; I can exercise; I can sleep later if I want to; I can watch a ball game in the daytime, or Saturday Night Live at night. All of these were off-limits before and now they are just a few of the perks available to me, just because I’ve grown older.

Just as spring is our reward for living through the winter, so is old age our reward for having survived the slings and arrows of daily life through youth and middle age. Robert Browning certainly had it right when he wrote:

Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made.

The years since retirement have been the richest, most eventful, most exciting part of my life’s journey. Despite the fact that I lost my husband to cancer only 18 months after we moved to a retirement community where we expected to have many years together, I have been able to find unexpected joy and fulfillment and adventure.

After a period of grieving and adjustment, I entered upon an amazing series of overseas volunteer activities with groups like Habitat for Humanity and Global Volunteers, which have resulted in lasting relationships with friends in such faraway places as Tanzania, Croatia, Hungary and Malawi, not to mention those with Americans in the work groups.

I planted trees in a remote village in Malawi, where there was no work group and I was totally alone and cooked my food on a “stove” made of three stones on the ground. I helped to build houses in a tiny village in Tanzania, where I befriended a man with a dream of building a secondary school, and I have helped to make his dream come true. I worked in a refugee camp for Bosnian war victims, and I set up a knitting project whereby I sold the sweaters they made and sent them money which, as refugees, they were not allowed to earn any other way.

And after ten years of widowhood, the most amazing and unexpected event of all happened – I married again! Here in our wonderful retirement community I met a man who had been widowed, and we found many mutual interests. Surprised by joy! At the age of 81! One never knows what may be in store.

So if someone tells you you’re over the hill, remind that person that it’s after you’ve reached the top that you start to pick up speed! And you can keep going and going and going.

Olive Tiller is a resident at Sherwood Oaks Retirement Community