‘I say to my wife, I feel like I’ve arrived at 74’

Dr John Wilson is a grief counsellor. He lives in York with his wife and has three children in their early 40s, and three grandchildren.

Iwas already on my second career when I took retirement four years ago. As a lecturer in education I semi-retired at 50 and then decided to retrain as a grief counsellor. Many years previously, I lost my baby son to cot death, and that experience stayed with me and eventually led me to retrain. I enjoyed a second career, even gaining a doctorate in loss and grief.

Then, aged 70, I thought it was time to wind down and spend more time on my hobbies: gardening, woodworking, playing the drums in my rock band (which has been going since 1980!) and spending a few hours a week counselling. But the world had other plans.

When Covid happened, it seemed pretty clear from the start that my skills and experience would be needed if there were going to be large numbers of bereaved people.

I set up a Facebook group to support people bereaved by and during the pandemic, which now has more than 600 members. I also helped to train several hundred counsellors online to work with Covid bereavement, and we wrote a book, The Plain Guide to Grief. I’ve suddenly found myself in demand as a writer and teacher of loss and grief – I get invited to speak at conferences and to work with charities. I say to my wife sometimes it feels like I’ve arrived suddenly at 74.

I feel I am using all of my life experience to do something important. However, I do think it’s a great shame that people are often stereotyped by their age.

It’s very easy to feel patronised when you get to 74, but it’s always been important to me to look for older role models. I hope I’m demonstrating that you can certainly be active and useful way, way past 70.

What’s important if like me you aren’t slowing down in your 70s is to make sure that you take your partner with you on the journey. That would be my advice. My wife has just published her first novel.

We’re both still active and engaged, but we make sure we have a lot of fun together. We do try to get that balance right.