To some people retirement from the paid workforce seems an entirely new, unpredictable and somehow daunting step to take. Most people do look forward to retirement, but then there are concerns such aswhether there will be enough money to live on through savings or a retirement plan; whether one can keep busy and interested in life; or how it might be possible for a retired couple to live together in continued harmony when they're always together with no workplace to escape to.

On the street we live on, fully one-third of the residents are now retired, no longer with the workforce. Some people spend more time doing volunteer work, others just keep to themselves as they always have; some live alone, some with spouses and children. There have also been marriage dissolutions on this street in numbers that rival those of retirees.

One can only suspect that this is a micro-look at what occurs elsewhere within the middle class, anywhere.

Retired for two years, a neighbour across the street informed us his wife was retiring that very day. And, he said, because he was an only child he was accustomed to solitude, and craved it, and he wondered how he and his wife would 'get along' now that they were both footloose, as it were, right next to one another day by day. Her interests are sewing and gardening, and she now intends to fulfill her ambitions to become more involved in those pursuits, while his are cooking and guitar. Moreover, their three children still live at home, one newly in the professional-status workforce, another completing her Master's, and the third just starting university. They'll manage.

A neighbour up the street, alone for the last dozen years since his wife decided to return alone to her Eastern European roots, leaving him to forge on where he preferred to be, retired several months ago and said he was busier than ever, more involved than ever, in work associated with his ethnic community.

Another neighbour, whose wife got fed up with his philandering, living alone also now, travels twice yearly to various places of the world to relieve the solitude that he'd prefer not to live with. He would prefer to find another life companion, truly missing the presence of his wife, but she is adamant; she will not return to him. In his search for a replacement he has some standards; he is an exuberantly fit man for a retiree, and would prefer a woman whose health and physical standards match his own.

A neighbour down the street has never been the same since his prostate cancer operation followed by a heart-bypass operation, and that's not surprising. But this is a man who had an inordinate zest for life and whose activities as a long-time retiree echoed that, so it's sad to see his social life degenerate as it has; he keeps busy on the Internet.

As for us, retired for fifteen and 13 years respectively; there is no question we are exceedingly fortunate to be comfortably well off due to a good, reliable pension income. And the fact that we are wholly engaged with one another, added to the fact that I had always wanted to live in closer physical communion with my husband, to be together at any time of the day. And that wish has been fulfilled. We can reach out to touch one another at any time, and we do. While each pursuing our own interests, complementarily.