Your post caught my eye, as we are the same age. When my late husband was ill, I was lecturing for one day a week, and it was my day off from cancer. Eventually, we had to have someone to sit with my husband while I worked, but I carried on till the last few weeks of his life...and resumed about six weeks after his death. This time round, my present husband is in a care home, and , quite apart from me finding caring for someone with dementia much harder, I have not worked for five years. I stopped a few months after we married, as he had cancer and needed chemo. I never resumed work, as after his treatment we planned to travel, but he developed dementia and I became his carer.
Sorry, this is a long winded way of saying, how helpful it would be to me now, if I had continued to work. It would have been a break from caring, a way to contact and connect with other people, and hopefully a source of some satisfaction. I feel it is way too late for me to resume my previous career, and although I have many friends, hardly any are my own age. That, in itself, is quite isolating.
As you have only just left the work place, is there any possibility of returning, should you choose to? It might be worth considering.
