The Retirees

It was 10 AM in the coffee shop. The baked goods were excellent and the menu for the rest of the day looked great, healthy and tasty. We were there for a late breakfast before driving up Oak Creek Canyon. I overheard “The iPad has pretty good specs.” I watched the three old men as we enjoyed our snack. They were in animated and wide ranging conversation not focusing on anything. Who were they and how did they get here? Sedona is a strange place now. It used to be beautiful – striking, but how it is a haven for pink jeeps, crystals, and strange beliefs. They drown out the background noise of normalcy.
I fantasized that the men came here following retirement – in large part as a result of pressure from their wives. It seemed like a great idea; hunting, fishing, golf, and a chance to write and paint - things they had intended to do since college. But it hadn’t worked out that way. Now they were here drinking coffee in the middle of the morning with two other guys who were equally bored. Their life here started out much as they had imagined. Then, soon, things started to change. There wasn’t time to write, and no one paid any attention to the few things they tried. Painting classes were populated mostly by old women who did decorative things with flowers and soft subjects. And, they discovered that it was impossible to portray the meaning they felt, without a lot more skill development than they felt they had time for. Hunting was hard to get to and the area was much more barren than they had expected. Fishing was good after a stocking, except that the time without tourists had shrunken to a couple of weeks in the spring and autumn. Golf was okay, but the cost was high, and the handicap was stubborn and rising.
Now, at least one day each week they had to make the two and a half hour drive to the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale. The retirement they had imagined had been startlingly short, suddenly they were old and sitting here in the middle of the morning drinking coffee with other guys who were in the same situation. It would be downhill from here on out to the end; the end that science would push out well into an uncomfortable future.