“Life offers us tickets to places which we have not knowingly asked for.”
Maya Angelou
At the beginning of April, we suddenly sold everything in the United States, found wonderful new homes for our pets, and were on a 24-hour series of flights that took us from Greenwood, Arkansas to Chiang Mai, Thailand to begin our real retirement.
I say ‘real retirement,’ because technically we were already retired. We didn’t work outside the home anymore. I had a shop on Etsy where I sold my artwork, but otherwise, we were supposed to be at the point where life got easier.
We lived outside the town of Greenwood on top of a ridge line southeast of town. We had a 650 foot+ STEEP driveway to get from the street to the house. It had trees on either side that made a habit of falling into the driveway with hard rain storms, ice storms, snow, etc. We were stuck up in our home sometimes for a couple of weeks at a time before things melted enough that we could chainsaw our way down to the road. Fire trucks and ambulances and other help could not negotiate our driveway.
We had 8 acres. We tried to keep an area around the house and out to the shop we had built ‘civilized,’ but even with a riding lawnmower and other tools, trying to keep the yard up had become almost untenable.
Working in the shop had become dangerous because of my husband’s decline. Even trying to get our mailbox decorations we had hanging on metal hooks to put out on the mailbox was an accident waiting to happen.
Life was getting more difficult – untenable – rather than easier.
Our son came when we were both ill at the same time and just couldn’t take care of each other. We both had Flu A. My husband also had pneumonia. I also had bronchitis and low blood oxygen, which the doctor insisted I needed to go to the ER to get treated. That saved my life, because my heart kept stopping and I had to have a pacemaker.
We flew to Thailand and moved into an Air BNB in the same building where our son had a condo. He was working on getting us a condo to buy so we could continue to live close to him.
Life gets in the way and my husband fell, had a stroke, and ended up in a nursing home. I moved into the condo.
Te tickets bought us a new life. We hadn’t really asked for one, but we NEEDED one. My husband is now getting the best of care at a place where the staff really cares about their patients. We couldn’t have afforded this in our former home. Brian is taking care of me, encouraging me to get healthier and BE HAPPY.
I am relishing my ‘second chance at life’ being amazed at how interesting Chiang Mai is. Even though I see the same streets over and over, I see different things every time. There are SO many shops. It’s really difficult to take it all in. There are SO many people going places. I sit at a cafe and simply people watch sometimes, marveling at all the people busily going about their lives on foot, on bicycles, on motorcycles and motor scooters, on tuk tuks, on buses, on Grabs, in personal cars…. The street is alive long after I’ve called it a night, having to get up at 5 to get ready for the gym. It’s a stimulating, WONDERFUL place to start a new life, with new interests, meeting new people, trying to learn Thai phrases and customs, trying to learn about their culture, trying to honor the way things are done here, eating new foods, listening to new music, and more.
Two tickets and our son gave us the best chance of enjoying the rest of our lives we could ask for. I never imagined we would end up here, but I’m SO glad we did!
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