For many, the golden years of retirement are painted as a time of pure relaxation and joy. However, the reality often involves navigating a complex emotional landscape where feelings of loss and celebration are deeply intertwined. This duality is powerfully chronicled by Stephen 'Steve' Kreider Yoder, 68, a former Wall Street Journal editor, and his wife, Karen Kreider Yoder, 69, who both entered retirement in late 2022.
The Bittersweet Tug of Gain and Loss
Steve's experience highlights this emotional push and pull. Attending his 50th high-school reunion near Atlanta in September 2025, he was met with a room full of welcoming, elderly faces. The gathering was a celebration of the remarkable years spent together at a boarding school decades ago, but it was equally a moment of mourning for classmates who did not live to see 2025. "It seems like we're doing a lot of this since we retired," Steve remarked to Karen afterward, "this celebrating and mourning."
While these emotions existed during their working lives, retirement has amplified the tension between gain and loss, making individuals more acutely aware of what remains. Steve openly mourns his career, despite the initial joy of freedom. After retiring, he and Karen embarked on a three-month tandem bicycle journey from San Francisco to Florida. Yet, upon returning home, he was surprised by waves of wistfulness for what he left behind: the sense of accomplishment, purpose, identity, newsroom camaraderie, and the regular paycheck.
These feelings resurface, like when he met former colleagues at a San Francisco bar and felt a pang of envy for those still in the professional fray. Even his old commute was missed. However, the mourning is consistently balanced by celebration. That envy dissipated at 5 AM the next morning when Karen's alarm sounded, and Steve realized he could return to sleep without the anxiety of a potential error in a soon-to-publish story. "I wake to that celebration daily," he notes.
Mourning and Celebrating the Everyday
The emotional dance extends to everyday life. Steve mourns the agreement with Karen that forbids him from climbing tall ladders but celebrates the freedom to finally hire someone for such repairs. He felt a rush of sadness while preparing his 1973 Honda CB350F motorcycle for sale, a symbol of his youth. Yet, he immediately turned to celebrate the 2005 Co-Motion tandem bicycle that represents his and Karen's current active life and good health, allowing them to pedal across America.
Health itself is a source of both mourning and gratitude. Steve acknowledges the signs of aging: slightly blurred eyesight from posterior vitreous detachment, increasing tinnitus volume, and growing forgetfulness—all deemed permanent by specialists. "It will get worse, so best to grieve now," he reflects, understanding that processing this loss is necessary to move forward.
The deepest mourning, however, is reserved for people. Flipping through his late mother's photos in October 2025—images from her childhood in Texas to her time as a missionary mother in 1960s Japan—was a poignant act of remembrance. Her world ended when she passed in 2023. Yet, this mourning was coupled with celebration as his 94-year-old father was present to treasure and explain those photos, a living testament to the family's courageous move to Japan as missionaries in 1961, which shaped Steve's life.
Finding Celebration in Legacy and Letting Go
Karen's journey mirrors this duality. She still feels the urge to call her mother, who passed away shortly before Karen retired, for advice on recipes or navigating early retirement. The ripple of grief remains. Her celebration comes in the form of a monthly 90-minute Zoom call with her four siblings, a tradition started after their mother's death. These calls are a space to share updates, cheer each other's adventures, and simultaneously mourn and celebrate their shared past, like chuckling over their father's obsessive family timeline.
For the couple, nowhere is this tension more palpable than in the process of downsizing. Sorting through a lifetime of possessions is a nagging task for many retirees because it requires grieving over the stuff and the memories it represents before letting go. They have spent hundreds of hours on this since retiring.
A poignant example occurred in November 2025 in Iowa, in Steve's parents' storage unit. As Steve's father leafed through documents and Steve sifted through more photos, Karen explored his late mother's sewing supplies. She discovered beautiful Japanese shears, cherished chopstick holders, Depression-era glass dishes, a museum docent nametag, and a collection of Nativity scenes and mugs. "We all three mourned over these artifacts that attest to the entwined histories that we can celebrate now," Karen writes. The mugs were taken back to the apartment for daily use, turning mourning into a practical celebration of memory.
Preparing for the Journey Ahead
The Yoders recognize that this cycle is just beginning. They anticipate mourning friends who move away from San Francisco and celebrating reunions. They will grieve selling their Victorian house and eventually leaving the city and remaining friends. There will come a time to mourn the end of cycle touring and then travel altogether. "But then we can reminisce with gratitude," they conclude. "Reminiscing is mourning and celebrating."
Their story underscores a vital truth for retirees in India and worldwide: the path through retirement is not just financial but profoundly psychological. Acknowledging and processing grief—for careers, health, people, and possessions—is not a sign of failure but a necessary step that clears the way for profound gratitude and celebration of the life that remains and the memories that endure.
