Susan Oleksiw

February 20, 2025
 
As I look at this date, and then the date on the previous post, I'm appalled that I have been silent in this space for almost a year. It hardly seems possible, but it is. My niece occasionally asks me if I've been posting regularly on Thursdays as I said I intended. Fortunately, our conversation moves on quickly and more than shaking my head in chagrin, nothing more is said.
 
A lot has happened in the last year. As you might imagine, a lot changes for someone when their life partner of 55 years dies. My experience hasn't been so different from other women losing a partner. I passed through the stage of seeing something interesting and thinking, I should tell Michael about that. He'd loved hearing that. Then came, I wish I could tell Michael about that. And after that, the less interesting, Oh, look at that. My response to minor catastrophes was about the same. I'm now at the stage of wondering where I left that very useful screw driver, or maybe it's time to check that pipe that runs so close to the outside wall—it has been pretty cold lately. And out of six hammers, one is just right for my hand.
 
I suppose the major change is what happens when there's more time of a different sort. There's less focus because there's no time crunch; the mind wanders and bumps into unexpected thoughts. I'm at the stage of thinking I meant to try that, to spend more time there. I have more time and I have less time. The result is less fiction and more photography—and yet it's all narrative.
 
This is an ongoing transit. I use the word transit because transition seems to imply an end point, and I'm not convinced there is one. Instead, I seem to be on a spiraling upward or sideways or somewhere, changing and discovering and trying things out. There will be more to report, but this is enough for now.