La Pura Vida

Okay. Time to make a decision. Life is short; do what you want.

Retta used to believe Mom’s advice meant always eating dessert first; Retta loved her sweets, especially anything fragrant, chocolate or marshmallow crème. Those were the halcyon days, she now thought wistfully.

Mom crossed over almost 20 years ago; Retta still feels her absence in the hole in her chest she left behind, still misses Mom weekly.

“That’s an improvement!” she realized, speaking aloud to the small group of friends gathered in her sunny living room.

“I used to miss her hourly every day. I was a little broken bird, bereft and bound to solid earth. It took me months to evolve to once a day, and many more months, no, years to arrive where I am today.”

Affirming nods and compassionate smiles soothed her continuing memory of Mom’s tragic passing.

“Today, I want to make a decision that will impact the rest of my life,” she said.

“Good for you, Retta,” said Julie, her BFF.

“I turn 59 this year. I’ve been on my own for over 15 years. I know how to save money, keep a home tidy and take good care of my health,” Retta said.

“I have a job that pays the bills, plus a bit extra, and a beloved senior canine who loves me to pieces,” she added.

“I floss, drive defensively and my car gets regular maintenance to keep it running faithfully.”

She paused, glancing around the circle of faces near and dear to her heart.

“I’ll be 60 in another year – what does my future hold for me? More of the same, I suspect.”

Supportive sympathetic nods from her friends.

“This month I spent time online looking for places where I can afford to live on my paltry savings and monthly Social Security benefits. I’m healthy, I live a simple and single life, I’m debt-free. I can live anywhere.

“Much to my shock and dismay, I learned single, healthy women of a certain age no longer receive the services and benefits that existed when we were growing up. The National Council on Aging disbanded several years ago. Senior housing has long waiting lists, if you can find the housing at all! And utility costs are through the roof across the nation!

“My original plan disintegrated as my knowledge grew about the lack of local, state and federal resources for women such as myself, for many people living in the US.”

The eerily silent room startled her. Retta was the oldest participant in the bi-weekly support group. She knew the others were considering their own personal and financial situations. Strong connections among them developed easily over the past several years of their gatherings. The topics discussed ranged across all subjects, keeping the few rules of their group simple and easy to embrace: be respectful, have compassion, laugh as often as possible, rotate the treat responsibility for the convivial coffee hour afterwards.

“I decided to look at international countries for my retirement. My ex-husband and I used to travel frequently on long vacations. I’m ‘kinda sorta’ used to international travel and learning new languages; this time will be different though. I’ll be traveling alone.”

Several of her friends turned worried expressions in her direction.

“Are you sure about this step?” asked Julie.

“What about leaving your friends?” asked Marg.

“How much will the move cost you?” asked the group’s accounting expert, Brenda.

“What about medical needs and insurance?” asked Nurse Betty with a tilt of her head.

Retta laughed, long and loud, completely defending the most important rule of the group. She wiped tears from her eyes and shone her bright smile on everyone as they, too, succumbed to the hilarity of their questions and the reality of Retta’s financial situation.

“Y’all know I speak and understand Spanish, even though I haven’t practiced it much for the last 15 years or so. It’s like riding a bike; you never forget the vocabulary accumulated over the years once you dive back into the environment.

“And that’s what I intend to do. On several of our trips, the Ex and I would spend weeks in a Spanish only culture. He didn’t speak Spanish and relied entirely on my buried skills. I’m proud to admit I rose to the challenge.”

Eyes popped open wide among the ladies. All of them lived in the same town their entire lives. Vacations meant visiting the pristine lake in the mountains for a week or two or driving to the shore for predictable beach adventures. None of them spoke Spanish or traveled internationally.

They were breaking new personal boundaries listening to Retta’s outrageous plans.

“I’m moving to Costa Rica,” Retta stated simply, then grinned at their shocked expressions and gaping mouths.

“When?” asked Julie.

“Probably by the end of the year; there’s numerous legal documents I must gather here first in order to apply for residency,” Retta replied, gently squeezing the stiff shoulders of her BFF.

“What about your job? What about your car? What about all your belongings?” Brenda’s questions awoke them, generating more group questions peppering Retta’s conviviality.

“It’s OK, everyone! No worries, sort of anyway. At least I don’t have a house to sell and I’m only taking clothes with me. I cannot imagine paying shipping fees for everything else.

“I want to be a Costa Rica Tica,” Retta finished up with a far-away expression in her eyes.

“What’s that?” asked Nurse Betty.

“A native Costa Rican, a costariccensa,” said Retta.

“I want to live La Pura Vida,” she added.

“Why Costa Rica?” asked Marg quietly.

“That was a happy development for me. I learned they don’t have a standing army (abolished in the 1940’s); they put their tax dollars into education, health services and eco-tourism. Did you know they invented that term? They’re environmentalists. 55% of the world’s bio-diversity is found within their little slice of paradise that stretches from the Pacific Ocean to the Caribbean. International agencies and researchers visit throughout the year to study the wealth of protected habitats. You can drive across the country in one day, although many travelers choose to stop half-way and spend the night in Cartago, the original capitol of Costa Rica,” Retta shared, trying to remember all the details of her extensive online research.

“And, I can live a good life on my monthly Social Security Benefits check. They also have mandatory national health coverage. I can certainly live with that! I don’t even have any prescriptions, I never smoked, and I stopped drinking years ago; maybe the occasional glass of Prosecco at a social event,” she added with a smile.

Several of the shocked expressions surrounding her softened into wistful smiles.

“You’ve made up your mind,” breathed Julie.

“I suppose I have,” Retta replied gently, reaching for her friend’s hand.

It took more than the anticipated year for her to complete all the tasks compiled on her Pura Vida To Do list, about a year and a half. Preparations really took off when she quit her job eight months into the process, finally growing intolerant of all the nonsense and unreasonable hoops everyone endured daily. She didn’t tell anyone at work about her plans when she gave her two week notice; unsurprisingly, no one asked about them either.

Her circle of friends teased her about renting at least a two-bedroom cottage so they could come visit. Retta promised she would.

What she unknowingly didn’t prepare for were the tumultuous emotions arising when she began the long, torturous task divesting the contents of her 10x10 storage unit. Waves of memories, hopes and dreams swept across her each time she opened another box for a last good-bye. In the end, time ran out; she already purchased her 1st class plane ticket and reduced her belongings to six average size suitcases, mostly clothing, a few books, her favorite DVDs and a DVD player, headphones, laptop, a bag of photos, a few mementos that always made her smile.

The simplifying of her life reinforced her belief that she didn’t need to bring the trappings of her ‘old’ life with her into her new, expanding adventure.

Every night, a heavy weight lay upon her heart and mind, an unfamiliar sensation entirely unanticipated; she wondered how long it would take to disappear and what did it mean? She had no regrets about her decision; she knew it was the right thing for her to do.

Each bright morning she awoke eager to complete her To Do List and move forward into her new life.

Rinse and repeat.

Retta tried talking about it with Julie and quickly realized Julie didn’t understand at all what she was going through. They were at different points in their life’s journeys.

Julie told her, “If I had the opportunity to move somewhere new and I knew it was what I wanted most in the world, I would give up everything to achieve that dream!”

Yeah, right, Retta thought. I don’t know what’s going on inside me but it feels awful and no one wants to hear about it.

She turned to the vast internet to see if there was a similar situation someone may have shared online. It took her many weeks until she stumbled across a tiny reference to “Surviving the Trauma and Grief of Relocating to a Foreign Country.”

The short article, found on an international travel site, was written by a young couple with two children. Their adventure wasn’t exactly similar to Retta’s but the emotions they described matched hers.

“The move is traumatic to my nervous system,” she pondered the idea. “And they’re correct; it is a form of grief I’m going through, too.”

Retta was grieving the loss of all the future plans and expectations she had created by storing her boxes of dreams for a decade, accumulating hundreds of dollars in monthly rent for a 10x10 air-conditioned storage unit.

It was a painful process to go through, and the grief struck every night, even beyond her arrival in Cartago.

The trauma of making, on her own no less, a huge quantity of unfamiliar life-altering decisions emotionally impacted on her daily. As time ran out, she began tossing the boxes into her car for transport to the various local charities without even looking in the box. What she didn’t know couldn’t hurt her, right?

If any of her friends wanted to make a similar adventurous alteration of their lifestyle, she intended to warn them of the emotional impact. She would pick a date, several months, perhaps even six or more, before departure to finish donating everything. Then she would spend the remaining time saying good-bye to her favorite locations, sharing get-togethers with her friends and pretending to live each day as if she already was a Tica, enjoying La Pura Vida.

Retta lives in Cartago today and it has been a roller coaster ride of an adventure. Early on she threw her expectations out the window and never regretted it. Her pensionado residency application will be approved finally by CR Immigration in a few more months. She was grateful for her Spanish education; it you want to live in Costa Rica, you’re much better off understanding and speaking Spanish. Costariccenses are generous and tolerant people; still, it is their country, and English is not spoken everywhere. It shows up mostly in the tourist areas. Retta doesn’t miss any of the typical US activities she survived, or more accurately endured in her +60 years in the States.

While it’s true she lost/donated almost every physical thing she’d accumulated during her 35-yr marriage and 60+ years living in various cities across the US, what she gained by embracing La Pura Vida in Costa Rica is priceless.

Retta made the right decision and sometimes wonders what took her so long.