Saturdays with Seniors: Nancy O’Shea’s ABCs

I am pleased to introduce Nancy O’Shea as our featured “Saturdays with Seniors” blogger today. The former Public Relations Director for Chicago’s Field Museum, Nancy also edited the museum’s membership magazine. Now retired, she enjoys taking classes in memoir writing. Lucky for us: we all enjoy hearing her read her essays out loud in class, too!

This week is the last meeting of our six-week experiment in Zoom memoir classes, and to mark its success I came up with an assignment I hoped writers might find challenging — and fun. “Write an essay that is 26 sentences long about any topic you choose,” I told them. “Have the first sentence begin with any letter of the alphabet, and have each sentence after that begin with the subsequent letter of the alphabet.” To help explain, I came up with an example off the top of my head. “You mean it? Zany assignment. A challenge for sure. But I’ll give it a try…”.

Writers rose to the occasion, returning the next week with essays about gardening, trips to Japan, work conflicts, mountain biking, a beloved dog, you name it. Nancy took the opportunity to write this poignant piece about her mother, starting with the letter “I.” Read closely and you’ll see how she took the alphabet full-circle: her last sentence starts with “H.”

There Will be Hugs

Nancy and her mother back when they could be together.

by Nancy O’Shea

I should be writing to my mother. Just thinking of her makes me sad. Knitting together memories, I reflect on her and the life she used to have.

Living — if you can call it that — in a senior facility during this pandemic, it’s like she’s on a desert island. Meals and mail deliveries are measurements of time. Nothing else changes for her. Oh, how good it will be when we can get together again!

Pre-coronavirus, we took our visits for granted. Quiz shows we watched, sitting in her apartment — Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy! — are cherished memories now. Really, the mundane has been elevated. Simple things — embracing, sharing coffee and cookies — have taken on new meaning.

The pandemic has shown us what’s essential in life. Unless this illness had descended upon us, would we have known? Very likely we would have continued day in, day out, unaware of our need for human contact.

We have improvised, using technology as a map that guides us to each other. X marks the spot. Yet technology has its limits. Zoom meetings are a fragile lifeline.

A history of this time will call it a crisis. But I think there will be an upside. Clouds will part. Driving once again on society’s open highway, I hope we will have learned to appreciate the journey as much as the destination.

Everyone will have a different take on what this time meant to them. For some, it will represent hardship, even death. Gosh, I’m so fortunate in that regard!

Hugs may be delayed, but there will be hugs, and they will be long and tight.