Parkinson's law - work expands to fill the time allotted. Of course, I have no idea on how it is to be a retiree, but I do know how it is to have days off, and I also very well know the feeling of "after I'm done with A, I will have plenty of time to deal with B, C and D". Like, a lot of responsibility was taken off my shoulders when my my wife and the youngest moved to Russia with me staying behind - I thought I would have so much time available, but ... no, I still struggle to get done with my 7.5 hours of work every day plus house work etc.
Due to certification processes and the GDPR laws (particularly the Schrems-II court case), my employer decided that I could not work from Russia. It was pretty bad communication, I had forgotten to tell my employer that I was going there (home office time ... who cares about such details), and my employer had forgotten to explicitly tell me about the new rules, so suddenly I found myself without work for a full month (very good timing, as I had just landed two projects). I had quite some ideas on what to do with all the "excess time", but of course ... there were no excess time, just being with the family took all my time.
My wife is also unemployed, but constantly busy.
Sounds like a nightmare and I am so sorry of the many barriers and hiccups that seem to be blocking your decisions. It must be extra hard to be separated from your wife and the youngest child let alone to be unemployed. Hope all is going to work out for you both.