Welcome back to Tough Love with Abigail Shrier, an advice column from The Free Press. Every Thursday, our contributing editor will address your conundrums, with no hesitation and no sugarcoating. This week, Abigail answers a question from Suzanne, who can’t decide whether to live near her beloved grandchildren or move across an ocean to “the place that allows my soul to sing.”
Dear Abigail,
I have lived a long, productive, happy life. After being a widow for some years, I got remarried four years ago, when I was 70, to a very special man. I feel I am in my last act. I may live to be really old, though I doubt it. Either way, I will soon be enfeebled to some degree, and not myself. Right now I’m still energetic, connected, engaged. I searched for what to do next, for fulfillment, to find meaning, to leave a mark. When my husband and I were last in Israel, it hit me. Took my breath away. I want to live in Jerusalem, as I did for a few years 50 years ago. I don’t want to never again live in Israel. But my conundrum: I have two daughters, and four grandchildren, aged between 6 and 12. They love me; I adore them. My daughters need me, and I need them. We don’t live far from one another and are together often. But I am never as alive as I am when I am in Israel, or as close to the meaning of life. My husband feels the same. What really is my legacy? If I move, I would come back often, for extended periods of two to three weeks. But it wouldn’t be the same. Should my last effort be to embed a lasting bond with my grandchildren, or should it be to be in the place that allows my soul to sing?
—Suzanne, 74, Baltimore
