The retirement plan

I am probably going to be an army wife for a very (very) long time now and no hard feelings about it. Its like adjusting in a family and making your own decisions- making a home out of a shattered house. We keep moving and shifting things from one place to another. Maybe that's why we can become good interior decorators, Vaastu Shaatra experts, event managers and hosts. Also the jobs that any 'sakku bai' can do can becomes our forte too. Why do I feel like I am repeating my options of job hunting for my future life? And I am worrying about the future unnecessarily. There is a reason for it. The place where I grew up was where all the army officers settled after retiring and it worries me. One in particular worried me so much that I am still sweating.

My neighbour (a former colonel's wife) is now retired from her glam army life and making a life on her own with her son away for months being in Merchant Navy. She's lost her husband in harness during his service and got the flat that they had applied, an army widow getting the privilege and priority. Army has a habit to fuss over the ladies and it becomes like a bad habit later on since husband's manage to give very little time to their better halves. And this becomes like another bad habit. Life looks normal with the husband out 24/7. So she looks like the type who must have dedicated her life around her son. She also looks like a schizophrenic, preferring her own company than others. I see her peeping through her door before getting out. The innumerable number of plants around the balcony that have over grown because of excessive manure, the dark rooms where she lurks around in front of her TV, her four O' clock routines in the morning and her constant bickering about the people around. The garage is filled with the empty trunks that makes no sense in her life since she would never move now but she is reluctant to let them go because it had been a vital part of her prime years. So there is no one to address you as 'Mrs...' and no children to wish you 'goodmorning aunty' on your way, does that mean you become unsocial and unfriendly? From the world outside I see her wallowing away in her old memories. Is civil life so difficult to follow?

Is that how all lonely widows live? or perhaps is this the new trend of how to just pass life of being a woman on her own? Which is all fine. But making others life miserable too because you just cannot see anyone happy or being normal. It's a sad state of affairs. And most of the times when you see such examples of army wives I get determined not to while away my time being just that. 

I can still see myself down the years becoming a better person than I am today and making choices that will make me happy first than my family.