Dear LPG,

I don’t have that long to go before I reach official pensioner status, and I wonder what I will be doing this time next year.  I suspect many people on the cusp of retirement wonder what getting there will be like.   I have an aunt who I have always been quite close to, and she does not live too far away. 

We have always been closer than those members of the family that you only see when you are invited to a family dinner or one of those family celebrations.  Since I started working, we have made time to get together occasionally, and she is one of those relatives I have phoned more than others.  

I have been doing it for ages, but if retirement bothers you, as you approach that stage, checking in with the members of our families who have gone there before us can give us a vivid insight into what we are in for.  

Please don’t think that I have been using her as an experiment when I say this, but for a while now, I have been making a point of visiting even more often, every fortnight on a Saturday.  

She has her friends and gets out and about during the days, but a while ago, she mentioned that the evenings sometimes leave her a bit lonely.  I, too, live alone, and after a week of really focused working, I feel the same way but find that an afternoon with her always perks me up a bit, and she now tells me that she looks forward to our time together.   

We do all sorts of things during my visits.  I have always found it refreshing to go shopping together at a much slower pace than usual, have a cheap meal at the local café and find an excellent video to watch.  One day she asked me to reach for something at the top of her kitchen cupboards, which sparked a conversation.  

A visit or two later, I suggested that we do a bit of a kitchen cupboard clear-out, and that is precisely what we were doing on a Saturday not so long ago.  I am still young enough to reach the higher shelves in her kitchen cupboard, and my sense of balance is not too bad, so I got on one of those folding stepping stools while she directed proceedings from below.   

It was all going smoothly until I realised just how many ancient tins and packets were lurking at the back of that high cupboard, and it was soon really evident why.   She couldn’t reach that far back, so after we had completely emptied it, and as I replaced each ‘in-date’ item, she kept reminding me to put every one of them at the front.  The problem is that not everything can fit at the front, and there can’t be a front without a back if you see what I mean.

I now regularly spend a few more of our meetings on the job, doing the freezer and going through the rest of the high and low places.  The draws also got a bit of attention.  As she has got older, it got pretty hard for her to get to the back of some of those. 

She is past the stage of lifting them off their runners for a thorough sort-out. 

So now we have added an occasional visit where we either check out her cupboards or open out a bin bag or two before turning a draw upside down to sort and reminisce about its contents.

It occurs to me that it is something that others might be able to do during the odd visit to a close relative.  I have worked out that going through one drawer or cupboard before the cup of tea and the video can be the ‘little and often’ approach that can make all the difference. 

It has got me doing mine too…

WY, Nunhead 

…and LPG adds some information on today’s celebration…

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