I keep running into couples going to Florida for the season

Now that the heavy snows have blown across the Northeastern part of the country I keep running into couples that are heading to their seasonal homes in Florida. They travel like migratory birds, flying south for the winter. This all seems well and good but I started thinking about what the subtext of their circumstances were. The theoretical picture that began to coalesce in my mind went as such: I presume these people had worked, either hard or easy, for a good portion of their lives and now had the means to afford multiple homes. They hadn't yet made the final move to Florida as, according to tradition, retirees whom have the funds do. Somewhere inside me a cord was struck. Is this what we work for? Is the goal in life to churn away, a cog in the great machine, only to retire to a life of ease in some terribly cheerful retirement village in Florida. Do we pedal hard and fast only to coast during the final stretch to the grave?

Don’t take me to Florida in the Winter if that is all I have to live for.
Leave me out in the cold in some deep hollow in Kentucky.
Let my bones and flesh go back to that earth that bore me into this world.
Lie me on a bed of moss and cover me with ferns and dead leaves.
Sprinkle pine needles over my face so that I may smell her as the end approaches.
Love me in memory and remember me in song.
Let strong drink take you back to my spirit
but don't lay me out on some beach to mummify in the sand.
Let my soul linger among the fog gathering
in between the rolling hills of my homeland
and ask only a Whippoorwill and a Hoot Owl to read my eulogy.