Life After 60: When life isn’t so rosy

We spend a lot of time here talking about the perfect dreams of your over 60 years.  But what happens when the dream isn’t what you thought it would be?

The aspirations of most as they approach their sixties are pretty diverse.  But there are some we are accused of trying to focus on.  They usually start with trying to wind back on their “job” a little so they can smell the roses.  Those roses might be to spend more time with the Grandchildren, to travel across the world, pack up a camper van and see Australia, or to move to the beach into a comfy low-maintenance apartment with sea-views.  I mean they ARE the dream… right?

But people have asked us to be a little more real for a moment and take stock of the reality of being 60.  So today, we’ll take a moment out of “living the dream” to contemplate how tough being 60 really is.

And being 60 is tough, for some!

When I started Starts at Sixty, my mum came up with the idea to launch a website called “Sixty Sux”, because for a while there all she could see in her 60^th years was that Sixty sucked.  Old friends had health issues, young people she cared for died tragically, her well-learned education and enthusiastic attitude had gone largely unappreciated by employers as she tried to find challenging post-GFC employment, and the GFC… Well wasn’t that a b*tch to the older generation.  I mean, we all faced it, but at 37, I might (hopefully) have more time to recover before I retire.

And she is only one person.  I know plenty of others that live a long way away from “the dream”, with tough realities of being 60.

Rarely do those dreams of your 60^th years include kids that don’t talk to you and won’t let you see your grandkids or early redundancy and prolonged unemployment that forces you into unskilled work despite having degrees and decades of experience.  They don’t include the death of a loved one that you planned to enjoy your finer years with, or god forbid, death of and grieving for a child or grandchild.

They don’t include a late-in-life divorce (well, perhaps for some they do).  Nor do they include cancer, watching your best friends die before they live out their dreams or smashed economies that destroy life-savings and marriages and aspirations.

Yet being over 60 is sadly, full of these things.  We cop a bit of criticism from time to time here at Starts at Sixty for focussing on the happy moments of being over 60.  For helping people dream about being a “grey nomad” or “world wanderer”, or romanticising the dream of Grandparenthood with beautiful quotes and emotional jokes.  Perhaps its because we listen to so many of the sad stories amongst our own over 60s that we feel a need to focus on the upside.

But today we’re listening to you and giving you a real chance to air the toughness of being sixty.  Does “Sixty Suck” for you?

Some I know have had their bodies turn against them, leaving them in fear of a momentous heart attack, or stopping them from being mobile and leaving them in pain every day.

Others I know have lost their dear husbands to cancer related illnesses before they even got to 60, after they worked and worked and worked to build up to the retirement dream, sadly never getting there.  I have watched as these men suffered then died, then as their living wives recalibrated their lives to make a new dream.  Some have never managed to.

There are those who have much less than perfect family circumstances.

No family is ever perfect.  I am constantly reminded of this by my own, who think I am a workaholic to the deficit of all others (I probably am), especially since I started running this website.

But in most families there have been divorces, remarriages, battles between stepchildren, sibling, child or parent alienation, depression issues, drug issues, workaholics, affairs, property settlements, bankruptcy, and jealousy.  It’s normal people.

Some people don’t have grandchildren and are devastated about it.  Others have them but never get to see them because they can’t or don’t come to visit.

Perhaps it is because you never visited them when they were young, or because your children won’t let them.   Whatever the reason, there is one.  Life isn’t always rosy.

So why don’t we talk about these things?   Are they something you really want to talk about?  Why do all of us only want to paint the perfect picture of being over 60?  Not the real picture.  

I know a lot of you only want the happy stories.  But today is a day to stop, take stock and seriously talk about the realities of being sixty. 

Tell us today, does “sixty suck” for you?  Or is it a time of aspiration and inspiration?