The Put Out to Pasture Life

It's well over two months now since I became a happy pensioner. Earlier I'd get annoyed when friends told me how much I'd love pension life because it suggested I was old and had one foot in the grave. Now though I couldn't care less. I just potter around the house doing nothing much, wake up late, have my meals late and a bath only at noon. And I love having no work pressures or responsibilities. It's only now that I realize how hectic my work had been, and how stressful it was getting through one urgent crisis after the other.

Initially I spent the first couple of weeks glued to my phone watching Korean/Chinese short reels. The plots were all the same, centering around rich and powerful CEOs and rival business groups, nasty mothers-in-law and both male and female characters furiously slapping each other around. Eventually I weaned myself off the silly addiction, and turned to burying myself in ebooks, particularly murder mysteries and whodunnits.

In between, I bought myself a sketch book and pencils, and tried to get into sketching. Turned out to be not too easy so I'm laying off that for a while though I certainly plan to return to it. Lord knows I have enough time on my hands...

What If

Years ago I read an article in the Readers' Digest about a little girl whose father had died and the family had to move away. I think the father was pastor of a church or parish which explains the move. She was unaccountably reluctant to leave and as her father's good friend tried to console her, she eventually confessed why: "What if he comes back?" If her father did come back, he would find his family gone and not know where they were. The father's friend hugged her tightly and assured her that he would tell the father their whereabouts if he did come back. But he said gently she did know, didn't she, that he was not coming back?

When my mother died, I was in my early 30s, a long way away from being a naive little girl. But I had that irrational hope just the same. In healthier times, my mother would rise early every morning to attend a prayer service at our church. A few weeks after she died, I wanted to do the same with the illogical, unfounded hope that somehow in the dark and early hours of the morning I would see her there, praying in church, and I could talk to her again. Needless to say, it didn't happen and I knew it wouldn't. There was just this tiny, mad part of me that hoped against hope...

I did continue attending the morning prayers for several years until I eventually tapered off. And among the regulars was this friendly, smiling woman who sometimes brought her pretty little granddaughter with her. Today I attended the funeral of the grandmother, now in her 80s, and the memory of those early mornings have brought on this requiem.