Pappy, Participation, and a Retirement Toast
Looking for a retirement toast?
Here’s the one I gave at a friend’s retirement party: “Buckle up, it might get weird for a while.
So raise a glass to weird, to the sensation of not knowing what might come next. But whatever you do on Monday, get up, have breakfast, and meet the day. Cheers!”
I went to a friend’s retirement party the other day. Summer retirement parties are the best; I find that there’s usually a barbecue, and not just a cake. Good times.
As the person in the room (figuratively) with the most “retirement time” under my belt, I was asked to give a retirement toast. To give some advice. Give a toast to the newbie retiree. Be the sage on the stage, if you will.
So I raised my glass and said, “Buckle up, it might get weird for a while.” Fellow retirees laughed. Those still working – the “unleisured” – didn’t quite know how to take that.
Retirement is one of life’s transitions that doesn’t come with much of a road map or instruction manual. And any advice you do get has the depth of a greeting card. You know, take a trip, join a club, take up golf or pickleball; as though simply filling your calendar will somehow make you feel whole, interesting, or purposeful.
If hobbies are things you do, clubs are the things you join, and travel is the places you go… then what exactly is participation? And why is it more about motivation than it is about activities?
Participation, I think, is how you meet the day.
Over the past few months I’ve been digging into the research, expecting to find one grand theory that explained it all. Instead, I found something much more interesting.
Rehabilitation scientists study participation. Occupational scientists study meaningful occupation. Psychologists study engagement and motivation. Gerontologists study social participation. They all seem to be describing neighboring parts of the same landscape, but from different directions.
I’m not ready to draw any conclusions just yet.
But I am ready to pay closer attention.
Because long before I ever opened a research paper, I knew two old men whose retirements couldn’t have been more different.
So the advice I gave her goes back to two wonderful, but ordinary old guys.
First, my mom’s dad retired from a lifetime on the L&N Railroad; he was a locomotive engineer. On a coal-fired engine no less. He died when I was young, but still old enough to remember him well. If there was a stereotype for how grandfathers were supposed to look, he was the poster boy! Short, bespectacled, wrinkled, almost completely bald except for the half-crown of white hair left on his head. He kept Nestle Crunch chocolate bars hidden from my diabetic Mamaw, and smelled like Old Spice.
He actually wasn’t as old as he looked, and he passed away at 72, only 7 years into retirement. And even as a little kid, I knew his world was very small. I never saw him anywhere other than at the kitchen table, the rocker on the front porch, or in his recliner watching TV…shhhhh, Cronkite is on.
Short of taking Mamaw to the Piggly Wiggly for groceries, I never saw him go anywhere. No “old railroad buddies” ever came over. He never talked on the phone. Even at age 7, I had way more going on than he did.
Let’s contrast that with Pappy.
My dad’s dad had an almost 40-year career as a plumber and a steamfitter at the Swift Meat Packing Company.
And, most relevant to my retirement toast, he was retired longer than he worked there.
Over the years, we’d all ask Pappy questions like: what was the secret to a long career, or a long happy marriage, or a happy retirement, or the meaning of life? Every answer became the same.
You get up in the morning.
You have breakfast.
And you go to work.
Or, you get up in the morning, have breakfast, and do what she asks.
Or, you get up in the morning, have breakfast, and read a book or go see your barber.
Regardless of the philosophical question, you just get up in the morning, and you have breakfast.
And at 100+, that’s actually how he spent his last day. He got up (he was in the hospital at the time). He had breakfast. His barber (who had been retired for 15 years) came to the hospital and cut his hair. Then he talked some golf with my brothers.
Then he fell asleep holding my grandmother’s hand, and never woke up. So, dying aside, that’s exactly how he lived every day. He got up every morning and had breakfast.
Pappy personified participation…in so many ways!
What made my Pappy approach life this way? An approach that was so utterly absent from Papaw’s; I honestly don’t know.
Maybe psychology has part of the answer. Maybe occupational science has another. Maybe gerontology has another still.
What I do know is that Pappy never seemed to wake up wondering how to fill the day.
He woke up expecting to meet it.
The older I get, the less I think retirement is about finding enough things to do.
I’m beginning to wonder if it’s about cultivating a way of meeting the day itself.
If that’s true, then hobbies, travel, volunteering, golf, pickleball, and book clubs aren’t the point.
They’re simply different expressions of participation.
“Buckle up, it might get weird for a while.”
“So raise a glass to weird, to the sensation of not knowing what might come next. But whatever you do on Monday, get up, have breakfast, and meet the day! Cheers!”
Related Reading
If you enjoy following ordinary observations that turn into bigger questions, you might also like:
- Happy Retirement: Why the Greeting Card Isn’t the Whole Story
- Retirement May Be the Modern Midlife Crisis
- The Forgotten Science of Adult Friendship
- The Senior Discount
Research Note
The observations in this article are informed by ongoing reading and research in psychology, sociology, adult development, aging, friendship, purpose, identity, and life transitions. While these essays are observational rather than academic, many of the underlying ideas are grounded in established research.
- Bridges, William: Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes
- Whiteford, G., & Hocking, C. (Eds.). (2012). Occupational Science: Society, Inclusion, Participation. Wiley-Blackwell.
- Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. – Self-Determination Theory
- World Health Organization. International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF)
Cynthia Ross Tustin is the founder of I'm Thinking of Retiring, an online publication exploring the psychology, purpose, and everyday realities of life after work. A retired Fire Chief, former ICU and Emergency Room nurse, instructor, and policy writer, she combines lived experience, research, and a lifelong curiosity about human behaviour to write thoughtful essays on retirement, identity, purpose, friendship, and the ordinary moments that quietly reveal something larger. Through her Retirement Field Notes and Ordinary Tuesday series, she encourages readers to approach this next chapter with curiosity rather than certainty.
