Miss (im)Mortality

I've been thinking about the end of days these past few weeks. In part, because my parents were in CT and much of our conversation concerned their imminent move to a retirement village. And, in part, because R.E.M. breaking up has really drawn a line under my 'youth'. My father laughed heartily when I informed him I was now officially middle aged: "Middle aged? You planning to live to 102?" Ha, ha indeed, Dad; your mother lived until she was 94, and Gramps until his early 90s. I'm not ruling out the possibility.

One rainy, jet-lagged London morning in the early 90s: I came face-to-face with my ghost of Christmas future. She was a tiny old lady, humpbacked. Muttering and shuffling along the freezing Stockwell pavements in her slippers. Dragging a leaky daschund behind her on a string. As I passed her, I caught a whiff of old cigarette smoke, human pee and general unwash.

I spent the journey to work imagining her life: 25 stories up a council block with a broken lift, alone in a cold water flat, surviving on pot noodles and cup-a-soup .... oh the horror, the horror.

Fast forward twenty years to last week's head wobble: maybe I 'retired' too early. That wasn't the plan when I left NY. I was always going to work. And I do. But, I earn nowhere what I 'should' be earning in order to bolster up my retirement funds. And, nor am I likely to. 55 is the first stop on the retirement train - and that's only 4 years from now.

I asked Jeremy, the family's financial 'safe-pair-of-hands', to run a pension scenario for me. Against what I have right now. What he showed me has put my mind at rest somewhat - but has also put actual figures on my twilight years. Sobering.

My mom loves Oprah Winfrey and is always telling me about things she saw on her show. I find O somewhat unsettling - but perhaps that has more to do with my wariness of people with money and power - than the actual show content.

Glennie was ambivalent about Tal Ben Shahar, Positive Psychologist and Happiness Guru. She was impressed by his approach to gratitude (very Catholic). But nonplussed by his urging that she live "in the moment". Not a concept that we Wildish women embrace with any confidence. We're fatalistic pragmatists.

I asked her one of Shahar's famous questions: "what would make your life 5% happier?" Mom responded immediately: "If your dad and I could go and see Chris in London." Can you afford to? "Yes we can, but we can't because what if we need the money in 10 years time and we wasted it on the trip?

"What if we wasted it on the trip?". That shook me out of my wobble. My mom is in her early 70s and she is worrying about the same things I am fretting over in my 50s. Things neither of us can control - even if we do nothing and go nowhere.

Jeremy's pension forecast covers me until my actuarially predicted death at age 85. What happens after that - I have no idea. But I'm not going to worry about it now.