Living The Semi-Retired Life: My Grandmother Died Sitting On Her Couch, Watching TV

Can we say retirement killed her?

Starting today, we get back to reviewing academic articles on subjects related to Living The Semi-Retired Life and Never Retiring.

My biggest problem with academic work is that it’s written by academics for other academics. Therefore, it can be dense and difficult to understand. All fine and good, however most professional reviews of scholarly writing feel the need to match this perceived level of intellectualism. While most popular media portrayals do a nice job making academic research accessible, they don’t fare so well making it relatable.

My aims:

• To keep summaries of research relevant to our going concerns short and to the point.

• To pull the key takeaway(s) out of the mess of literature reviews, statistical conclusions and wordy discussion sections that clutter academic work.

• To relate the findings to the things that matter most to you and I.

In addition to chronicling my semi-retirement journey and plans to move to Spain as my partner and I approach relative old age, these reviews are another perk of a paid subscription to the Living The Semi-Retired Life newsletter. I made today’s article free as a means of introduction to what we’re doing here for a recent influx of new subscribers.

With this backdrop, today we consider the following article:

An article in a European journal that uses an American dataset on social life, health and aging. The creators at the University of Chicago started the project, in part, because:

By the mid-2030’s the number of Americans aged 65 and older will top 77 million and the United States will then have more retirement aged adults than children.

In 2035, I will be 60. So pretty close.

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My Grandmother died in November of 2005 after suffering a stroke. She was 79.

Twenty-one years prior to her death, my grandmother had a heart attack that prompted her to quit working as a waitress at a well-known Italian restaurant in my hometown. Between 1984 and 2005, my Grandmother’s life increasingly consisted of little more than sitting on her chair in her living room watching sports on television.

Once the highlight of my childhood, the amount of time she spent at our house on major holidays steadily decreased. Dinners and subsequent card games that used to go on past midnight stopped happening. Instead, it was dinner, coffee, dessert and straight home to sit on her chair.

The number of visits my Grandma made to our house on any other day also decreased to the point where they were effectively zero.

Did the heart attack kill my Grandmother? Or was it retirement from a very social job?

I have a hard time believing it was the heart attack.

How could something that happened 21 years prior to her death be responsible for her demise? And I don’t merely mean demise in relation to her actual death. I mean her slow downward spiral over two decades of pretty much constant sedentary behavior.

No more drives to the racetrack in Saratoga Springs or New York City for a Yankees game with my Grandfather (who remained relatively active even when my Grandmother wasn’t and passed away in 2000 at age 94). No more bus trips to the casinos in Pennsylvania. No more annual vacations to visit my Uncle in Reno.

And, maybe most importantly, no more working at the job that, in many ways, gave my Grandmother her identity outside of her post as matriarch of our family.

Which leads to a short and sweet summary of the aforementioned research because the main points are all we need:

• Retirement has a statistically significant negative effect on physical health, depression and anxiety.

• Retirees have fewer members of their social networks and less contact with these people.

• The erosion of the social network post-retirement explains a significant portion of the adverse physical and mental health outcomes.

It’s important to note two things:

One, this is just one study so consider the findings within this limited context. This said, the study comes from a robust dataset.

Two, the sample included only healthy individuals at pre-retirement.

I’m unconvinced the heart attack rendered my Grandmother unhealthy. I have my reasons for this we can leave for another day. For the time being, take my word for it.

She ultimately sunk into a depression because of the fact that she let go of her work. Work that connected her to a social network beyond her immediate family.

Sadly, social networks in America are often contingent on employment. Not quite the same way, but similar to the way we connect comprehensive health insurance to employment. Once you quit working, there’s a good chance you’ll lose touch with friends and have less contact with those who remain. This absolutely was the case for my Grandmother.

On my two visits to Italy over the last two years, I was struck by how at home I felt. I’m of Italian descent. While my Grandmother was born in America, her parents were born in Italy. She was the closest person in my family to being authentically Italian, not just Italian-American or, call it, New York Italian.

The elderly people I observed in Italy reminded me of my Grandmother and other relatives. So much so it felt weird in a good way. If they were speaking English instead of Italian they would have been carbon copies of my Grandparents and my Father, in particular. The hand gestures. The conviviality. Their general way of being.

It wasn’t that her sedentary and depressive states sucked the life completely out of my Grandmother. She still had enough spunk to joke around and have fun. But it came in spurts. That desire to get out and do things, that curiosity and sustained zest for life had gone away.

I’m convinced things happened this way for my Grandmother because work was her social life. When work was taken away from her, she sunk into a pit of despair.

Where I’m from, it takes effort to maintain a social life, especially as you get older. This is pretty much the case across the United States. To remain social, you have to do as my Father does today and my Grandfather did until his death. You have to get yourself out of the house in the morning, get in your car and make your daily stops.

This social life isn’t our way of life. You must go out of your way to have it.

By contrast, in Italy and Spain this social life is the way of life. You don’t have to go out of your way to get it. If you live in a city, all you have to do is step out your front door. The built environment and subsequent culture facilitates all types of informal and formal social interaction.

If my Grandmother lived in an environment like the ones that exist in Italy and Spain, she would have made it into her nineties. While my Dad is doing and my Grandfather did relatively well, they would and would have fared even better in a setting more conducive to social life that consists of frequent encounters and sustained mingling with friends and acquaintances morning, noon and night.

And let’s not forget, it’s not only about the daily rush of feel-good brain chemicals. It’s about the positive physical effects of walking everywhere as opposed to driving or, worse yet, spending your life in a dark living room on your easy chair.

I’m not saying living in a European city or some other built environment conducive to social interaction and such is a cure all. You still have to do the work to get yourself out there. I am saying it’s much easier to fall into a rut in most parts of America, especially after you quit work and say goodbye to the conduit for many, if not most of your friendships.

Work should not provide or dictate your social life. A vibrant social life must be a happy coincidence, if not an intentional consequence of the way we situate ourselves as a society and culture.

This is one reason why, over the last 20 years or so, I have favored urban environments in large U.S. cities. But they’re not enough, especially as I get older.

This is one big reason why my partner and I are planning to move to Spain. Because we think living life in a more public and social way will help us maintain our physical and mental health, not to mention vibrancy, into and well beyond relative old age.