There is the travel piece: We would be free to go places. I wasn't thinking too extravagantly: I just thought it would be wonderful to see other places in the US by car. Fall in New England, Niagara, New York City, Hawaii. Well, maybe not ALL destinations would involve driving. San Francisco was somewhere we thought we might spend some romantic days and nights. Or just get in the car and drive and see where the road took us even if it was just to Enumclaw. Now it's an effort to go a few miles let alone take a trip across state to visit family. We do travel. Northbound on 405 to Overlake Cancer Center is about as far as I see us going for the time being. Both of us have loved the ocean. I doubt we'll get there again, together.
The retirement piece. That one is broken beyond belief now. The assumption was (and how foolish is it to make assumptions about the path of one's life? There's a hard lesson) that we would grow old together in a fairly comfortable retirement. In addition to a modest trip or two every year we could volunteer, take classes, work in in our garden, just BE together. Maybe we would have had grandchildren. There could someday be grandchildren but the odds say that they will not have a paternal grandfather. A little piece of their lives broken too before they are even here to know it.
What else? For me, I selfishly mourn that I will (the odds support this) be alone as I age and and I die. Not the way I thought would happen.
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