One of the issues of retirement is that it lasts so long that some of the very things that make it great at the beginning, may not stay that way. Of the people that I have talked to around the world about retirement, one of their common factors is that they see retirement as a time where a person has more control over their lives. They may be working a little bit, but they are going to pick the job, dammit. People are not going to be telling them what to do as much as before, no sirree.Of course this may be true in the beginning, in the golden years, before health or circumstances begin to deteriorate. In my youth, I worked in what is normally called a nursing home, and let me tell you, there is not a great deal of freedom in most of those settings. If you require a great deal of care, it's going to be on a schedule that both you and the nursing staff have little to say about. You may not be able to wake up when you choose, or sneak down for a midnight snack like you did for most of your life. This is the part of retirement that folks don't talk about much. Home health care has a bit more potential freedom to it, but that usually requires stable housing, a family setting, and financial planning. Even with home health care, our physical condition just may not allow us to hop in the car and shoot some pool at a local pub.
My father hated the idea that he would not lead an active life to the end. He claimed to carry a card in his wallet that said if he lost any of his senses that he wanted to be taken out back and shot. Then he pretty much lost his hearing and proclaimed that now the card said that he had to lose TWO of his senses before he would be taken out back and shot. Then his eyesight went and we didn't hear much about that card anymore. Mercifully, he died fairly quickly from a stroke.
I have very mixed feelings about this control issue as I get older and it gets rolled into the retirement package. Abby, my wife, is much younger, and I do not relish the shift of control in which, whether I like it or not, she will have more sway over my day. I am not sure it would be any better with an anonymous health care aid, but there it is.
Even Jesus talked about this! At the end of John, he tells his disciples, "Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go." (21:18)
This all just underscores the notion again that retirement is a changing thing of many flavors and requires some attention or other people, perhaps strangers unfamiliar with our peculiar joys and needs, will be making the decisions for us.
The most challenging of these decisions about control is about, of course, the final days. Like my father, most of us fear the pain and ignominy of a prolonged debilitating illness at the end. Death is the final retirement factor and there are few places to talk about it. Different Christian denominations have vastly different positions on this issue but this should not keep us from developing our own opinions. Here is a Presbyterian publication that is particularly good: https://www.presbyterianmission.org/wp-content/uploads/ga-2016-abiding-presence-oct-17.pdf
There is an increasing movement in NY and around the country to give individuals a bit more control over these final decisions and to let professionals help them without recrimination. While I am not prepared to give anyone medication or even advice on their particular situation, I am prepared to talk about it. For more on this see deathwithdignity.org.