QUOTES ON RETIREMENT AND AGING Sometimes memories sneak out of my eyes and roll down my cheeks. —Ged Backland ‘Old times’ never come back—and I suppose it’s just as well. What comes back is a new morning every day in the year, and that’s better. —George E. Woodberry The best place to be when you’re sad is Grandpa’s lap —seniorresource.com As I grew older I thought the best part of my life was over. Then I was handed my first grandchild and realized…the best part of my life had just begun. —T-Shirt Slogan The years between 50 and 70 are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things and yet are not decrepit enough to turn them down. —T. S. Eliot My first grandchild, Jordan, was born on January 30, 2011. I was jolted, blindsided by a wallop of loving more intense than anything I could remember or had ever imagined….This is what I didn’t expect. I was at a time in my life where I’d assumed I had already had my best day, my tallest high. But now I was overwhelmed with euphoria. Why was she hitting with such a force? What explains this joy, this grandmother elation that is a new kind of love? —Lesley Stahl You take all the experience and judgement of men over 50 out of the world and there wouldn’t be enough left to run it. —Henry Ford Don’t cry over the past, it’s gone. Don’t stress about the future, it hasn’t arrived. Live in the present and make it beautiful. —iliketoquote.com The best time to start thinking about retirement is before your boss does. —thefreshquotes.com - 1! - In the last months of her life, my mother-in-law dwelled in a hospital bed in our house. It took all of her strength to get down our steps, walk around the block, and get back to the front door. As we inched down the sidewalk, she pointed out every flower, the pattern in paving stones, the various shades of the trees and bushes. I had never seen my neighborhood like this. At first, I was infuriated by our pace. She would stop often, not because she was short of breath, but to examine the texture of a flower. It’s hard to give ourselves even 15 minutes of the day. It means overcom- ing the nagging distraction of our many pressures and aims. My mothers-in-law reminded me of the patient momentum of looking and really seeing, turning an ordinary walk into gladness for continuing to be among the living. —Wendy Lustbader DO NOT ASK ME TO REMEMBER Do not ask me to remember, Don’t try to make me understand, Let me rest and know you’re with me, Kiss my cheek and hold my hand. I’m confused beyond your concept, I am sad and sick and lost. All I know is that I need you To be with me at all cost. Do not lose your patience with me, Do not scold or curse or cry. I can’t help the way I’m acting, Can’t be different though I try. Just remember that I need you, That the best of me is gone, Please don’t fail to stand beside me, Love me ’til my life is done. —Owen Darnell When you finally go back to your old hometown, you find it wasn’t the old home you missed. It was your childhood. —Sam Ewing Of all ghosts, the ghosts of our old loves are the worst. —Arthur Conan Doyle Old age begins when one looks backward rather than forward. —May Sarton - 2! - There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age. —Sophia Loren When we look at an old person, we see what we may become: one who has lost health, beauty, children, status, income, home, friends and lovers. The greatest sorrow of the aging human being is an aching loneliness for what is gone forever. —Kay Kinley Melaney It is never too late to be what you might have been. —George Elliott I thought growing old would take longer. —T-Shirt Slogan If I’d known I’d live this long, I’d have taken better care of myself. —Mark Twain Remember: The dementia patient is not giving you a hard time. The dementia patient is having a hard time. —Unknown How far away the stars seem, and how far is our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart. —William Butler Yeats Everyone is the age of their heart. —Guatemalan Proverb One day you’ll be just a memory for some people. Do your best to be a good one. —Internet Meme The habit of reading is the only one I know in which there is no alloy. It lasts when all other pleasures fade. It will be there to support you when all other resources are gone. It will be present to you when the energies of your body have fallen away from you. It will make your hours pleasant to you as long as you live. —Anthony Trollope - 3! - You can take no credit for beauty at sixteen. But if you are beautiful at sixty, it will be your own soul’s doing. —Marie Carmichael Stopes You can’t have a better tomorrow if you are thinking about yesterday all the time. —Charles Kettering Want to forget that you’re growing older? Walk across green grass with bare feet. —Toni Sorenson The cheerful live longest in years, and afterwards in our regards. Cheerfulness is the off-shoot of goodness. —Christian Nestell Bovee I have often noticed that a kindly, placid good-humor is the companion of longevity, and, I suspect, frequently the leading cause of it. —Sir Walter Scott The happiest of all lives is a busy solitude. —Voltaire Studies show quite strongly that people’s satisfaction with their life increases, on average, from their early 50s on through their 60s and 70s and even beyond—for many until disability and final illness exact their toll toward the very end. —Jonathan Rauch I know that at the end of my mother’s life I felt isolated in my plight, especially compared to colleagues being feted with showers and welcomed back to work with oohs and aahs at new baby pictures. I was tempted, out of pure small-mindedness, to put on my desk a photo of my mother, slumped in her wheelchair. —Jane Gross One problem with gazing too frequently into the past is that we may turn around to find the future has run out on us. —Michael Cibenko An archeologist is the best husband any woman can have: the older she gets, the more interested he is in her. —Agatha Christie - 4! - The best thing about being over 70 is being over 70. Certainly when I was 45, the idea of being 70 was like, ‘Arghhh!’ But you only have two options in life: Die young or get old. There is nothing else. The idea of dying young when you’re 25 is kind of cool—a bit romantic, like James Dean. But then you realize that life is too much fun to do that. It’s fascinating and wonderful and emotional. So you just have to find a way of negotiating getting old psychologically and physically. —Helen Mirren You’re never too old, too wacky, too wild, to pick up a book and read to a child. —Dr. Seuss If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once a week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would have thus been kept active through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature. —Charles Darwin The great secret that all old people share is that you really haven’t changed in seventy or eighty years. Your body changes, but you don’t change at all. And that, of course, causes great confusion. —Doris Lessing Grandparents are frequently more congenial with their grandchildren than with their children. An old man, having retired from active life, regains the gaiety and irresponsibility of childhood. He is ready to play....He cannot run with his son, but he can totter with his grandson. Our first and last steps have the same rhythm; our first and last walks are similarly limited. —Andre Maurois It is quite wrong to think of old age as a downward slope. On the contrary, one climbs higher and higher with the advancing years, and that, too, with surprising strides. Brain-work comes as easily to the old as physical exertion to the child. One is moving, it is true, towards the end of life, but that end is now a goal, and not a reef in which the vessel may be dashed. —George Sand Once you’re over the hill you begin to pick up speed. —Charles Schultz - 5! - One day I woke up and I was the oldest person in every room. —Bill Clinton The older I become, the more I think about dying, and the less I worry about dying. —John Chesire Here’s what I say about aging: It’s really scary when you’re looking at it from the outside.