Been retired for years, but it doesn’t feel that way: ‘If life continues like this, I’d love to!’

Mfissures: “We have both been retired for years, but it doesn’t feel that way. I am active as a pink 50+ ambassador for a national organization that draws attention to LGBTIQ+ elderly people. When I still worked as a spiritual counselor in home care and in care centers, I never encountered an openly ‘rainbow parent’. That is of course not true if, according to estimates, one in fifteen elderly people is LGBTIQ+. Many rainbow elderly people go back into the closet when they become dependent on care. I wanted to address that after my retirement.”

Ineke: “Marjet inspires people, but a lot came down to her. Then I also became an ambassador. We organized a symposium together with others. There are now meeting afternoons here in Oldambt, and Winschoten has been given a rainbow zebra crossing.”

Marjet: “Oldambt now has a lively rainbow community for young and old. I mainly focus on LGBTIQ+ elderly people and have created a song and story program to discuss the situation of rainbow elderly people together with the Groningen singer Klaas Spekken and pianist Tony Hoyting. With this we want to interest healthcare institutions in integrating LGBTIQ+ friendliness into their healthcare provision.”

Ineke: “I always come along and stand behind the information table. We have been to Zaandam, Deventer, Haarlem, Alkmaar, Nijmegen, but we usually stay in Groningen and Drenthe. Together we give guest lessons to healthcare workers.”

Marjet: “And we contribute to symposia throughout the country.”

Ineke: “Marjet has a day job. She prepares a lot and is a very perfectionist. Recently I asked: when are we going on holiday again, then I will see you again, haha. She sits behind the PC three days a week to make contacts with care centers and municipalities. I personally put in one day a week.”

Marjet: “But I don’t just work for rainbow elderly people. I am also active in the Oldambt Landscape Foundation, which is committed to preserving the open landscape here. This is threatened by wind turbines and mega stables. I even canceled my membership of GroenLinks because that party wanted to turn Groningen into an energy province. Now I vote PvdA, hahaha!”

Old iron

Marjet: “I studied sociology in Groningen and later humanistics in Utrecht. I have been a policy officer for a long time at the ministries of CRM (Culture, Recreation and Social Work), later VWS (Public Health, Welfare and Sport), and Social Affairs. But it gave too little satisfaction. If you had worked on policy for a few years, the cabinet fell, a different minister came in, policy was gone! I did not want to retire there in The Hague. I just ran into burnout. After that, I enjoyed working as a spiritual counselor in elderly care for almost twenty years.”

Ineke: “I did physiotherapy and worked in it for a number of years, but that wasn’t for me. That is why I trained as an occupational therapist and then first worked in a psychiatric institution, then in the business world and eventually I had my own practice in Zeist. When I met Marjet in 2013, I moved that practice to Groningen. In the meantime, I obtained my master’s mark in goldsmithing.”

Marjet: “I was very ready to retire, also because I had found my niche in the LGBTIQ+ world. I had worked since I was eighteen, when I started as a student assistant.”

Ineke: “I actually didn’t want to stop until I was seventy, but I didn’t feel like using the electronic patient file. As an independent therapist, you had to set up a completely new system on the computer. So I stopped when I was almost 68. I regularly retreat to my craft room in the guest bathroom to do goldsmithing. Wonderful, then I am in a different world. I made our rings from gold and old iron.”

Marjet: “And I like bird watching from the kitchen.”

Ice flowers

Marjet: “Our division of tasks in the household is simple: the cleaner comes once every two weeks, regularly a gardener, Ineke does the rest.”

Ineke: “I cook, do the shopping, sew and iron and do the odd jobs.”

Marjet: “But I do walk the dog in the morning, because Ineke likes to sleep in. I’ve been walking less since I broke my knee over a year ago. Actually, I need a new one.”

Ineke: “But we want to go to the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao with all those beautiful stairs, so I will encourage Marjet to walk.”

Marjet: “We often go on holiday to Spain and Portugal. We had an old camper van, but it was left in the garage more and more often. Then we put almost all our savings into a new one.”

Ineke: “To try it out, we did a tour of Jutland last summer. Last winter we were ‘energy refugees’: we went to Spain and Portugal for six weeks.”

Marjet: “But the heating on the bus broke down and we had to scrape frost flowers off the windows in the morning.”

Ineke: “We spend little money on eating out. I like to cook, also for groups. Recently for 22 people. We are part of various groups of friends who eat together, such as ‘the stews’…”

Marjet: “For the time being, we live here in the Groningen countryside. We have good neighbors and we will continue to do our volunteer work for a while. If life continues like this: I would love to!”

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