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DiscussionDownsizing, To Move or Not to Move? That is the Question
Aging Well | Last Active: 20 hours ago | Replies (477)Comment receiving replies
Replies to "I too moved from Illinois but to Florida 13 years ago. My husband passed last year..."
Good morning, @dg0797 I think you hit the nail on the head with your closing sentence. "This is not an easy decision."
When my wife was alive we had many discussions about where to live, etc. One decision we personally made was that we'd never 'chase' our kids and pick a place to live just to be close to one of them. Our main reason was that we never wanted our children to consider not taking a new job, make some life change, etc. because "Mom and Dad are here". On the other hand, my folks moved to Florida and while they loved being there early on, when my mom got older she often told me she wished she'd not moved, especially once travel was problematic for her. I remember her saying "I always thought "well, I can just get on a plane and go see you, your sisters, and grandchildren until I couldn't."
As @spudmato suggested, before each of our large decisions in our lives we literally wrote out a detailed pro and con list, knowing no place/job/etc. would ever be perfect so we needed to be able to pick the alternative that had the most 'pros' for us. With our location decisions, the big one for us was how much we love the change of seasons and the amount of water there is in the Midwest. When we lived in New Mexico we came to realize how much we missed water -- and we realized it quite quickly. Certainly a case of different strokes for different folks.
Strength, Courage, & Peace to all!