After Susan

To the Editor:

Editor’s Note: Columnist John Heckel received this as an email. With the sender’s permission, we include it as a letter to the editor.

Hello John. I hope it is OK to call you John. We have never met, but I am also a retired HSU professor (taught from 1983-2020) and my Susan (my living partner for 52 years) died of metastatic breast cancer on May 5, 2025.

Your words in the current Senior News ring clear and true to me [“After Janet,” February Senior News, page 10]. The main difference is that my loss is not as recent (it was nine months ago), but I am still working on learning how to live alone and discovering who I am without Susan.

At present I feel like that process will never end.

Thank you for having the courage to write what you did. I was crying again by the time I finished it, but it felt good.

Charles Chamberlin, Arcata