ABSTRACT
In older age, the landscape inescapably alters: threats to physical health, to mental integrity, and emotional strain appear more than ever before. In an age where medical intervention has prolonged our healthy lives, many fear a lingering dying beyond when we are physically or mentally competent. Retirement may be a long-awaited relief but it also offers anxieties and losses, with lessening of income and loss of contact with others in an everyday, but reassuring, way. Continuing to work might be tempting, out of pleasure in the activity and needing to keep earning–but it could also be as much to do with protecting yourself against the loss and anxieties retirement brings. Delaying retirement might look as if it will push back death–but sometimes it just shortens a period of less pressured time. The death of a loved one, particularly after the stress of a long-drawn-out illness, can be a relief as well as a painful loss, and this can be confusing.
