Dear LPG, 

I have lots of black history tales to tell, but this is a story with a moral.

I met and made a really good friend when I was young and made the move from Jamaica to England back in the 1950s.  It was a three week ‘cruise’ on a cargo boat, and I learned all about sea sickness really quickly during that voyage, and though I was traveling alone, my newly made friend was the only aspect of it that made the journey bearable, and even fun.   

We had left our culture, family and roots there, and it was a wrench although we both were young girls with lots in common to keep us occupied.   Coincidentally we both had the same plan; to take advantage of the invitation to work in England for a year or two before returning home to Jamaica, but somehow that never happened.  Our lives were very similar really.  We chose different industries to work in, and different areas of England to live in, but kept in contact.  We both got married and had British born children, and I don’t know where the years went. 

Before we knew it we were at retirement age and we had each made visits back to Jamaica during our working years, like many others.  When my friend retired, she and her husband opted to go home to Jamaica.  They had invested all their savings in the building of a beautiful sun-drenched home and enjoyed the benefits of living a slower life.   My husband and I had planned a similar retirement but when I thought about it my Jamaican family was dwindling and getting older, and all my children chose to remain in England, so I persuaded my husband that this was the best option for us too.

Three years after moving my friend’s husband died and she was left in a beautiful home.  She lives alone, has few friends and children who visit when they can, but she now tells me that if she were ten years younger, she would gladly swap the sun for her friends and family back in England.

I have told you this story because I think that there is a moral for any retiree who is planning to move home, wherever in the world that is.  No one can predict what happens in the future but if you can find a place to retire that is relatively close to at least one of your children please think before giving up all the things that have become familiar to you.  So much changes so quickly when you are away from your original home.  It is better that your children are a couple of hundred miles up the motorway than a couple of thousand miles across the seas.   

PB, Lewisham Park