13 Days Out...

In just 13 days my professional work life will end and I'll officially be retired.

Unexpectedly, I’ve been seized by a bout of slight panic and foreboding. Up until recently, I’ve been positive. With a carefully planned budget, minimal as it is, I felt relatively sure I could make my small IRA last until I turned 90. Then I’d have to downsize and live solely off Social Security. Problem is, I need to find senior housing within five years to make it work. And senior housing is scarce, with waitlists of no less than five years or closed completely, meaning I can’t even sign up.

I want/need to live close to family, especially as I grow older. What I discovered is that there is only a handful of senior housing units in the entire county and the low-income housing is pretty much filled up. With several consecutive years of Northern California wildfires that destroyed many homes in our area, and then 15 months of growing unemployment due to the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s no wonder there’s a dearth of available affordable places to rent. I’m lucky to be living where I am.

I love where I live. A duplex with an ample side and back yard where the grandkids have played for going on eight years, I enjoy a small lawn and lots of flowers, planted or in pots. There’s an orange tree, a holly tree, a flowering camelia tree, and other trees and shrubs big enough to require annual trimming. A rose bush has grown taller than the fence between my next-door neighbor’s back yard and mine. My duplex, the middle one of three, is off a private driveway from the main street so it’s relatively quiet.

My front room has a vaulted ceiling. The dining room’s only wall is the kitchen where there’s an open space for serving food, so I can see through to the kitchen window from my favorite chair in the front room. With an office/TV room, a bedroom, and a one-car garage, I have been happy living here, just ½ mile from my daughter and her family. Knowing I will need to downsize was already causing me to experience a sense of impending loss: I will have to chose carefully which pieces of furniture I get to keep.

Most of what I own does not have great monetary value, but memories are tied up in everything. What must I give up? My oldest daughter’s hutch and antique chair? –she passed away just under three years ago. A handmade buffet of solid oak with inlaid mahogany? –a piece I garnered after living several years in a former tuberculosis campus turned health center complex. The TB patients who lived and died there crafted such furniture as part of their therapy. An old altar from the same campus? –I refinished it years ago; it now holds my printer and Wi-Fi component. A glass table held up by a large bronze otter? –made by an artist friend who sold such pieces for $10,000. None of these items will be “necessary” when trying to fit my belongings into a much smaller rental.

Speaking of smaller, senior housing units for one person are tiny, with no garage. At least some of them have small patios or balconies to counteract the shut-in aspect of these dwellings. I can almost catch my breath again considering opening a sliding glass door and letting in fresh air while sitting outside with a few of my favorite potted plants and hanging wind chimes. Almost.

I found a senior housing apartment complex with patios/balconies right here in town across the street from a park where I take my daily walk. Amazingly, its waitlist was open, so I immediately called to see if I qualified to apply. I was asked what my yearly income was going to be and was told, yes, go ahead and fill out the pre-application form online. Ecstatic, I did so, my heart catching hold of morning sunlight and the evening whir of nesting birds. Maybe I can do this after all, I told myself.

Then I was notified that the updated minimum annual income necessary to rent one of these units was just over $3,000/year more than my annual Social Security checks amount to. However, because of my advanced age (I am 77), I might still qualify for one of their original apartments a block away. A single two-story building with no patios or balconies, and no greenery of any kind, it reminded me of an old, sad looking, nursing facility where people go to die. In one fell swoop I landed in a quicksand of anguish.

Is this a forecast of what retirement is going to be for me? I desperately want to believe otherwise. I choose to believe otherwise.