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[cheesehead]

How do you deal in this rather lonely world if you have little or no family?  I don't mean to restrict this to the nuclear family.  I mean what if it's just you, a spouse, and an one elderly parent?

Does the future concern you at all in terms of being "alone" without a family?

Do you have friends who consider you part of their family?  In my experience, most people are clannish and wouldn't entertain the notion that a friend is part of their family.

[larryc]

C'mon over for dinner tomorrow, Cheese. And for Thanksgiving. We like you.

[cheesehead]

You mean it, LarryC?  That's sweet of you. :-)

I really would appreciate answers to my questions, too.

[melba_frilkins]

Kurt Vonnegut wrote a good essay about this. He talked about how important it is to have family, and if you don't have one naturally, you need to find one through some other social group, such as a club, organization, church, etc.

It's been some time since I read that essay. I'd love to read it again. Does anyone know what I'm talking about and what volume it's in?

[infopri]

How do you deal in this rather lonely world if you have little or no family?  I don't mean to restrict this to the nuclear family.  I mean what if it's just you, a spouse, and an one elderly parent?

Does the future concern you at all in terms of being "alone" without a family?

Do you have friends who consider you part of their family?  In my experience, most people are clannish and wouldn't entertain the notion that a friend is part of their family.

I actually have given this quite a bit of thought over the years.  I come from a fairly large family, but we are geographically and emotionally distributed.  I've never even met most of my still-living relatives, and, with the exception of my sister (who is older than I am) and her son (and my BIL), I haven't seen any of the relatives I do know for many, many years--some of them, not since childhood.  My grandparents and parents are all dead.  Moreover, My Better Half is quite a bit older than I am, and we have no children.  So, I fully expect to be all alone in the world when I am very old and most in need of a family.

Does it concern me?  Sure.  Of course.  I have a few close friends, but I don't know that they'll be around in the years to come.  (Just to bring the point home, my closest friend in the entire world for the past 30 years was recently diagnosed with breast cancer.  Her prognosis is very, very good, but her illness just underscores the inability to take anyone's presence for granted.)  Moreover, I anticipate that My Better Half and I will relocate when he retires (probably within the next few years), which means starting over in a new place where we know no one.

I don't know how I'll deal with it, if I do end up alone.  Somehow, though, I will.  What choice will I have?  I'm pretty independent, and I'm outgoing, and I guess I hope I'll find people to help me get by, and whom I can help.  Mostly, I figure I'll cross the bridge if and when I get there.  I generally don't borrow trouble from the future, if I can help it.

[melba_frilkins]

I am in the same situation and mindset as infopri. If I find myself old and alone, I hope that I'll be able to find a good place to live, with others in the same situation who are looking for community. Hmm...maybe we'll all find each other there.

[prof22]

I think of this too.  I don't have a partner, my mother and cousins live about 2 hours away.  That's it.  However, I attempt to maintain a relationship with them, and I'm blessed with some wonderful friends in my current city. I figure that I can't predict what will happen in 30+ years.  Live in the moment I guess.

[2much2do]

I've thought a lot about this as I've watched my parents age.  While I don't think I recognized it as a kid, my parents' friends were smokers, pretty heavy drinkers, and didn't really engage in "health behaviors."  They are now 86, and literally, all their friends are dead.  We have a big family, and are relatively close, but for day to day contact, it's tough.  Even though my parents cultivated relationships with younger people, those are moving to a more reasonable climate when they retire.  And it is hard for them to meet people now, because they are older.  It worries me  because I don't have a huge circle of friends, and don't make friends easily.  If I start to lose those, it's going to be a lonely haul.  I do have an aunt who moved to Sun City, and she talks about "forcing" herself into groups.  They'll have some craft group that meets weekly, and she finds that people kind of ignore you for about 6 or 8 weeks and you have to just persist in attending until they realize you aren't going to give up.  Doesn't sound like much fun to me.

[onion]

I think about this a lot (probably too much, given my age).  I'm single, I'm in a new place, and I am not close to my family of origin.  I'm meeting people here, but who knows if it will all cohere?  (I'm also the only "single" in my department--again.)  My dear grad school friends are scattered hither and yon, and most of them have married and started their own families.  My best friend from grad school and I once had elaborate post-retirement plans (and I thought we were serious!); however, she has since married and had a couple of babies and I never see any of them.  I spend holidays alone (often by choice rather than being with my parents, who I don't get along with for valid reasons). 

I had to take myself to the emergency room last week, which was an incredibly frightening and isolating experience.

So, yeah.  It sucks.  What am I going to do at 65?  75?  85?  Who will visit me in the nursing home, other than Girl Scouts?  I once heard about a retirement community for old activists and academics, but I've never been able to scare it up on the internets.  I need to find it because that's where I'm going to move. 

[mountainguy]

I come from a moderately-sized family, but I'm not terribly close to them emotionally, nor do I really want to be. They get on my nerves if we have to be together for more than a few days at a time. I'm single at the moment and have given some thought to what happens if I'm single into old age. I'll cross that bridge when I get there, but my hope is that I'll die suddenly without a long illness beforehand.

In the mean time, there are other coping strategies. I definitely plan to adopt a dog and maybe a cat or two as soon as I'm in the financial position to do so. Their companionship is emotionally uplifting. And I'm making an effort to maintain relationships with my close friends from undergrad and grad school. Who knows where they'll be 40 years, but I figure it's worth the effort.

A slightly morbid question . . . has anyone given thought to whom you want to bequeath your estate to?? I'm not terribly close to either of my siblings at the moment, and the idea of them or any of their (future) children getting my estate just because there's no one else for it to go to doesn't sit well with me. Of course, a lot can change in 30-50 years' time, and it's not like I have any money to give away right now (yay, grad school debt!).

[edwidge]

Onion, I'm sorry you had such a s***ty week. Is this what you were thinking of, in terms of a retirement community for women who are activists, artists, and former faculty?

http://www.nytimes.com/2000/08/24/garden/generations-raising-more-than-consciousness-now.html?scp=3&sq=retirement%20home%20for%20activists&st=nyt&pagewanted=1

[zuzu_]

We should ask the mods to create a forum for Retirement Issues, and we should use it to start coordinating  co-op type living situations for retiring academics. I am not kidding.

[mystictechgal]

Yes, I've thought about it, particularly since my husband died.  That wasn't supposed to happen.  My folks are long gone and I'm 10 years younger than my closest sibling (whom I haven't seen in over a decade).  I'm 30 years younger than my eldest living brother (my eldest brother died 8 years ago), and haven't seen him in probably 25 years.  I was 10 years old before I ever met my eldest brother (the one who died).  All the rest of my siblings are in-between and while I talk to them on occasion I haven't seen any of them in almost 6 years.  We're all pretty spread out geographically.  I doubt if I can count on any of my nieces or nephews to take care of me in my old age, although there's one or two who might.

I am lucky in that I also have my husband's family, who still consider me family, and most of them still live nearby.  It's possible that one of those nieces or nephews would help me, but it's not something that I count on.

I do have a local family that sort of adopted my husband and me.  We're close enough that I listed them (with the blessings of his family) among his survivors in his obituary, but their family is quite large and they'll have enough to deal with without worrying about me.  And, that's even assuming I stay in this area, which is by no means certain.  I also have a friend of 40 years who considers me as a part of her family (as do her daughters).  But, again, I'd certainly never think they should be responsible for me when I get old.

So, yes.  Unless I remarry at some point I expect I will be alone. I don't know that it's something that bothers me, at least not yet.  In part, I suppose, because I've never expected to live long enough to really get to the point that I'd need someone to take care of me.  I'll admit that I've started to suspect that I might be wrong about that, but it's still not something that really worries me.  There's no point in being worried about it.  Whatever will happen will happen in due course.  I'll have plenty of time to worry about it when it does.  There's not much I can do about it in any case.

[the_honey_badger]

I think about this a lot (probably too much, given my age).  I'm single, I'm in a new place, and I am not close to my family of origin.  I'm meeting people here, but who knows if it will all cohere?  (I'm also the only "single" in my department--again.)  My dear grad school friends are scattered hither and yon, and most of them have married and started their own families.  My best friend from grad school and I once had elaborate post-retirement plans (and I thought we were serious!); however, she has since married and had a couple of babies and I never see any of them.  I spend holidays alone (often by choice rather than being with my parents, who I don't get along with for valid reasons). 

I had to take myself to the emergency room last week, which was an incredibly frightening and isolating experience.

So, yeah.  It sucks.  What am I going to do at 65?  75?  85?  Who will visit me in the nursing home, other than Girl Scouts?  I once heard about a retirement community for old activists and academics, but I've never been able to scare it up on the internets.  I need to find it because that's where I'm going to move. 

We'd always take you in you are one of my favorite people.  I like the idea of a co-op retirement situation and the husb agrees--its our plan to find one or start one. We both are losing family members at a rapid rate and have a small pool to begin with. Add in the really dismal opportunities for community in Tenure Town and we are getting more and more isolated with each year as those far, far away get absorbed in who and what is right there.

My closest colleague just left academia altogether after six years single here. It was miserably hard and he decided that a library staff job at Old Alma Mater U was preferable to decades here in an area very unfriendly to gays and with a very limited pool of potential partners. I miss him, but I don't blame him.  I think that this is all more common than not when you "go where the job is" you often can't sublimate the personal loneliness with activities that not only meet other emotional needs but bring you in contact with a community of like minded people.  I know that if I lost my husband, I might make the same choice my former colleague did. Otherwise it would be dangerously isolating.

[post_functional]

I have a great family.  Wish they were here.