A reporter is supposed to be objective when he approaches a story.

That is not, however, the way I felt walking up to Janet Hoult, Culver City’s honorary poetess laureate.

Recently widowed, how was she faring?

“It has been difficult,” she said.

No need to elaborate.

Been there.

“Charlie passed away the day before Thanksgiving,” said the poetess. “Since that time, I have been involved in problems with the stepchildren.”

She even wrote a poem about it. Her title is a tantalizing giveaway, “A Loving Family or a Family of Termites.”

Changing the subject makes an important difference.

Janet said that writing “about anything that is in the news gets my mind away.”

Charlie, who was 83 years old, and Janet were constant companions for the 26 years of their marriage.

I can’t think of a more laudatory way to characterize, or spend, a marriage, especially by a couple in their upper years.

Charlie was a rocket scientist, the first I ever met. Janet was a college professor.

In addition to their obvious mutual love, they were welded more intimately together by mutual tragedies.

Each lost a child to a violent death.

Losing a child, then a spouse, is an unimaginably towering emotional mountain to scale.

Janet’s response:

Teaching a class of poets-to-be, some as mature as 90, every Wednesday afternoon from 3 until 4 at the Senior Center.

It helps.