Chapter 29. Living Small.

The smallness is enveloping us. Our lives, once filled with work, volunteer jobs, parties, events, activities, and days not long enough to cover all the happenings, are now limited.  Ours was not a “big” life in the sense that we changed the world, but it was active.  Many of our relationships, I’ve discovered, were transactional.  That’s not bad.  It’s simply the way of doing business. In my pre-pre-retirement life, I had eight formal gowns.  GB had two tuxes.  Saturday nights were reserved for major events, dinner parties, restaurants, concerts, opera.  Weekdays were filled with projects, expansion, planning the future.  And the future always included the next trip. The future lay ahead in giant leaps.

It was a life of constant motion and involvement in the community.  After I stopped my consulting practice, I leapt into volunteer projects at the Urban Farm, adopting a dying horse named Dan and giving him a last good year.  I worked on strategic and development plans. I mucked stalls, broke ice in the subzero temperatures.  I sat on Boards for the Farm and for Bergen Spay and Neuter Alliance.  I joined the Denver Foundation as a committee member and helped review grant applications.  I continued to ski.  GB sold his practice and began teaching at the Dental School.  He was thriving in an educational atmosphere.  We filled our garden with chickens and dogs. During Covid, we added a gas fire pit and spent evenings there with friends. We continued to have fundraising events for the Urban Farm and Love with Actions, the facility in Rwanda for children with developmental disabilities. Our relationship with GB’s biological family grew and gave GB a sense of belonging he never had with his adoptive family.  Life was full and it seemed that retirement life would be no different than before.

But it isn’t. In our case, life has become smaller. A couple of falls and economic reality require we produce a diminished footprint.  My tumble last autumn stopped me from skiing this year.  I doubt that I’ll renew my season pass.  GB’s hydrocephalus has left him using a cane and he walks slowly.  He also hunches over the cane until I remind him to stand up straight.  I hate seeing him walk like that and he hates watching me limp when I get up from a chair. We’re pained watching each other.

 As we begin to sift through the memorabilia, we are now coming to a reckoning with the inevitable shrinking of us.  There are no gowns in the closet.  The tuxes hang in garment bags waiting to be donated somewhere.  We are surrounded by the evidence of our travels:  sculptures, paintings, baskets, weavings, rugs.  When we move, we’ll take very little with us.  We’ll have to select the pieces that bring us the greatest joy or memory.  

Then there are the photos.  The memorabilia of our life together.  Pictures of vacations, friends, families, events, Alba, the grandsons, and the animals we’ve loved.  The seven Newfies that interspersed the six breeds other than Newf, the seven or eight cats, the marvelous Conure named Paula and her friend, Pikachu, the bunnies, the chickens, Henry our beautiful rooster, Dan my gorgeous Shire horse, the goats, and lambs we helped birth. And there are the photos of the garden, our glorious place of respite.  We began chronicling its growth the first day we moved in.  It was a vast expanse of lawn adorned with a couple of Aspen, five cottonwood trees, a Scotch pine, an Austrian pine, a Crabapple tree and a berm of horrible evergreen bushes.  Not a wasteland, rather it was manicured and tame.  We sought to make it wild.

This summer, we’ll be sure the garden is in its full blooming glory, but it will be tamed.  Its wildness will be subjected to the same smallness we’re feeling so that potential buyers won’t be overwhelmed by its size.  We’ll paint the house, and, in the process, we’ll cover the murals painted by a friend lost to us.  They reflected the critters that visited our garden, the fox, skunk, raccoon, heron, birds, rabbits, squirrels, and coyote.  The murals reflected our love of the Maine coast and the lighthouse on Isle au Haut and they reflected our love of books and the many animals who lived with us up until about 2000 when the artist disappeared from our lives.

Life has become smaller.  I remain active as a volunteer.  I love writing.  I am even enjoying the planning for the eventual move.  But it’s still a smaller life.  Fewer friends come by as those from our pre-retirement days fall aside and as others become frail or die.  Our love of the Newfoundland Dog will be part of our memories as neither of us can imagine handling a giant breed in another few years.

Eighteen months ago, I sat with the Gorillas in Rwanda.  I took the trip while recovering from a fall I had earlier that summer.  The first trek we took was through the jungle to watch chimps.  We left the hotel pre-dawn, drove about an hour, and began climbing.  I was in horrible condition and barely made it that first day.  But as the week went on, my body adapted to the heat and humidity and by the time we trekked up the volcano to see the Mountain Gorillas, I was good.  I think I suspected it was my last travelling adventure.  

Yesterday, GB had lunch with an old friend of his.  This man, now 87, was a world-class designer.  He achieved international recognition, respect, and adoration.  Today, his body is crippled, and his hands no longer enable him to draw, build models or create art.  He told GB he is ready to die.  His productiveness is behind him.  He can no longer express himself with his hands.  His life has become less, and he doesn’t like it.

Having acknowledged this, having come to a reckoning about where life goes from here, I now realize, of course, that the challenge still exists.  Finding the tricks to living small is what I’ll be doing for the next years.  There has to be an adventure ahead.  We just need to learn how to maneuver it.