I still have difficulty letting go. I hold on to old clothes. I still have most of the shirts, pants, and ties I wore to work even though I have now been retired for almost five years. Now the only time I wear a tie is when I have to attend a wedding or a funeral. I still have textbooks from college and the thought of even giving them away once caused a serious argument with my wife.
I know that George Carlin has a famous routine about “stuff”. I laughed when I heard it the first time, but it’s true. Your “stuff “ is what helps define you. When we moved from our home of 36 years there were almost monumental decisions of what to let go of. I would make almost daily trips to Good Will with boxes of our “stuff ”.
I still have boxes of old hard drives that I am somehow, someday, going to catalog. I have boxes of family pictures that I need to organize even though I haven’t looked at them in years. I have a 2006 Ford Explorer with 112,000 miles on it. The windows don’t work, the rear windshield wiper doesn’t work, the heater fan only works on level three or four. It usually gets all of fourteen miles per gallon, but I am comfortable driving it. My wife is not. I have had the car since about 2008. She has never driven it. She says it’s because she is too short and can’t reach the controls comfortably. I am still comfortable driving the car, but a decision had to be made.
This new life we have doesn’t really fit this old car. It is almost too big for our garage and the mileage is getting to be a burden. I just had to replace the battery and I know I will have to replace the tires soon.
So we have to get a new car and let go of my old friend. The whole process of researching cars, test-driving, talking to salesmen is one of my least favorite activities. One of the guys I know loves this. He always tries to work the deal in his favor. I suppose I could do that, but I just don’t trust the salesmen. I had a number of car salesmen as patients and the more they described their jobs, the worse it sounded. I tried to do it online, but that almost became too complicated. There were no humans involved. One service was based in Texas and if I liked a car they would transport it up here. I could drive it for three days. If I decided to buy it I would just have to do a wire transfer of money to their bank. I was uncomfortable with that process. I did more research online. I ended up giving my name to a car research site called Edmonds. Big mistake. Phone and Internet for then contacted me over a week by various dealerships. I thought I had found a car so I called a dealership. They said “Come on down—we have this car for you”. We got there and after much delay they said that car was gone, but they had many more just right for us. We walked out. The next day we did go to a dealership and ended up buying a new car. My wife likes it because she can drive it. She also likes all the new safety features. It beeps warning noises if you drift over the lanes. She says she now wont have to tell me when I do this, the car will. I like the car, but I also liked the Explorer. I think change is harder as you age—at least it is for me. I get used to things being a certain way, get comfortable with certain routines and then everything changes. I still have difficulty accepting that I am no longer an active therapist. I consciously let go of all my old patients and resisted all of their attempts to maintain contact. I did maintain contact with one. I would see or text her intermittently over the years. She has gone thru a lot and I just couldn’t see leaving her. However she is now in a new relationship and seems to be in a good place. She hasn’t contacted me for a while now and maybe even this is ending.
I think what I liked about being a therapist was meeting people at times of crisis in their lives and actively entering into their process. At times it was almost like being swallowed up into a whole new universe. I liked the acceptance and even the power of being listened too. Yet after almost forty plus years I really had to realize that it was time to let go. I have had to start thinking about what it is that I want at this last quarter of my life. I have a wonderful wife, grown married sons, and grandchildren. I really want to be able to focus on this. I still ask myself almost every day, “Is this enough? “ Sometimes it is and sometimes it isn’t. I still think I am in process of deciding what I want to do. Eric Erickson called this stage Ego Integrity vs. Despair. I would like to continue to develop and someday it is really possible. I keep telling myself that I need to be grateful for those days and what I have. The 12 Step programs focus on “One Day at a Time”. All of the 12 Step mantras sound so simple, but they are really difficult. The key is the ability to let go—but that’s my problem. I just have to accept that I am still a work in progress. Maybe I need to keep focusing on my favorite 12 Step mantra “Progress not Perfection”. We are all just fallible organisms. The more I focus on the positive aspects of my life the more acceptable this progress will be.