I have been thinking about retirement a lot lately (no, not my own!) While retirement may be mentioned in terms of the economic crisis or in blissful advertising of various products, I have been wondering about how palliative care patients face the issues of retirement and how retirement is viewed in the context of serious chronic illness. I was slightly saddened but not surprised by the recent announcement that my friend and colleague David Oliver, PhD would be retiring. Perhaps you saw his story on CBS This Morning with Charlie Rose or at Christian Sinclair’s Plenary Session at this year’s AAHPM. I also learned that he and his wife, Debra Parker Oliver (a nationally known researcher in hospice care!), have been invited to address a plenary session at the 2013 AAHPM. If you don’t already know about David, please take some time to look at his blog ( David’s Video Blog ) about coping with cancer and his experience facing terminal illness, titled. It has received over 44,000 hi