Stopping by memories on a snowy Thursday
Feb. 12th, 2010 07:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogI'm beginning this entry before hitting the road but it will post when I get home. Just some capturings and coincidences and a flood of compassion that overcame this small south shore town yesterday and last night.
I got through the snow with no troubles- other than running out of windshield washer fluid on the Triboro Bridge and being blind for about a mile into Queens until I could pull over- and got to the area about an hour early. Time enough to drive through my old neighborhood, seeing everyone digging themselves out, and my childhood home more covered with snow than my current one has been all winter:
Things I'm glad I don't have to shovel for 200, Alex
Having built in plenty of time for travel delays, I wound up the first one at the funeral home. Friends and family weren't there yet, but oh how the memories were already in place. Pictures of a life well lived; art objects and playbills and collages of word and picture from her recent struggles.
Oh, and a wedding dress.
Not Jan's; that would be a bit much. No, this is one she made for a dear friend of hers, who became the bride of her husband's lifelong best friend some years back. Lynne brought the dress, the wedding pictures that went with it, and these words (which she was kind enough to permit me to share here) which say more about her than any I can reconstruct after all these years away:
What a magnificent soul our Janie is.
I love her husband's best friend with all my heart.
To acknowledge our love and her love for us
Janie made my wedding dress.
She made it to a vision I had.
We bonded and fell totally in love as she wrapped her material, measuring tapes and love around me as she made this dream dress come true.
That is what Janie is for us. Someone who makes our dreams come true.
We love you so Janie.
Your soul and giving spirit has made us all better.
Lynne
Later, I would share a meal with Lynne and her husband (who she met on one of her early faith journeys not long after mine took a different path than hers did), along with another couple and their much-like-Emily daughter who knew Jan from a medieval-recreation group they later became involved in. The dress itself was the simplicity of gorgeousness; later in the afternoon, our high school friend Melanie came in; Mel teaches at F.I.T. and has been designing dresses since she was 15, and even she was blown away by the beauty, the intricacy, the love that went into it.
The afternoon trickle of friends turned into minor flooding, and we wondered how the evening service would hold it all. I saw few other people I knew at that hour other than Melanie and her family, but it didn't matter. We were all bound by the memories of, and the love of and for, a remarkable woman who had touched so many people in so many different ways.
----
After that meal, I checked in- other friends who were staying here had gone to pick up a family member- so again I wound up the first one in before the 7 p.m. sendoff. It would turn out that I was also the earliest- with the exception of one aunt who was able to make it- in the long-standingness of our friendship. I couldn't put a date on it, just that I couldn't remember ever NOT knowing Jan. (Sadly, her father and brother, who had been here earlier in the struggle, went to Alabama to comfort Jan's mother, and when the storm hit they couldn't get back. It either streamed to them or will be seen on a video they made of it.)
The 140-person room had, I'd guess, more than five times that by the time the informally formal service began. (I'd counted at least a half dozen cops among the attendees, so I never expected anyone would blow us in to the fire marshal.) Several other old friends, including one of Jan's oldest and dearest high school friends, had connected by then, but hundreds of others- faith people, medieval people, school people, theater people, who knows how many other circle people- all joined in a common voice to say thank you. And we're sorry. And goodbye.
A few spoke. I was one of them- mainly to sum up the range of experiences and ages and faiths that all converged in love and goodness in this one all too short life. I quoted Jan's own definition of her religion: God is too big to put inside anybody's box. There were poems, and Celtic songs, and prayers to many manifestations of that too-big God.
The guardian angel of her final weeks- an almost-as-old-as-me friend of Jan's with some medical training- came east from Portland Oregon as soon as she heard the word, and helped shepherd her through the ups and downs of the hospital process of the past six weeks. As did Donna's ex-husband, just as much as friend to her. This story, though, was from long ago, at a time when Donna still lived here and she was the one who was sick. It wasn't anything complex or life-threatening, but it came at a time when Donna's cherry tree was coming into its gorgeous, but very short, period of blooming. She mentioned her sadness about missing that life-affirming experience. The next day, Jan and Donna's sons brought her the next best thing: a branch which Janice had taken from the tree, full of the cherries and blossoms and life that meant so much to her friend. They laughed, they played, they showered her with the blossoms in a hospital room, bringing life to a place that oh so often takes it from us.
That was my friend.
At the end, her oldest son, accompanied by his younger brother, sang her favorite song: Fleetwood Mac's "Landslide." In it, and after it, I indeed saw her reflection in the snow-covered (if ground-level) hills of this place we once shared, and which will always be her home. Her ashes will be scattered in her garden, which I have never seen, but which in more blossoming times I surely will.
----
Morning broke with brilliant sunshine, pancakes at the obligatory visit to a local diner-
Gorgeous glass-block dividing wall right inside the front entrance, fitting the retro theme perfectly
- and reconnecting with home, where I nowhead am. Where, it turns out, the wife of one of the other speakers last night grew up, a mile or two from our house. She still has a niece here, though. She lives one street away from us. Another of the speakers quoted one of Jan's most recent fans, who fell in love with her message of love and acceptance at the October conference I drove Jan to. She, of course, is from Kenmore- one suburb over from us. Even in these moments of trial, there are the infinite moments of connection. I'm so blessed to have had such a long one with her, and am just as blessed for all the ones made here- and by all of you. I don't say that nearly enough.
I got through the snow with no troubles- other than running out of windshield washer fluid on the Triboro Bridge and being blind for about a mile into Queens until I could pull over- and got to the area about an hour early. Time enough to drive through my old neighborhood, seeing everyone digging themselves out, and my childhood home more covered with snow than my current one has been all winter:
Things I'm glad I don't have to shovel for 200, Alex
Having built in plenty of time for travel delays, I wound up the first one at the funeral home. Friends and family weren't there yet, but oh how the memories were already in place. Pictures of a life well lived; art objects and playbills and collages of word and picture from her recent struggles.
Oh, and a wedding dress.
Not Jan's; that would be a bit much. No, this is one she made for a dear friend of hers, who became the bride of her husband's lifelong best friend some years back. Lynne brought the dress, the wedding pictures that went with it, and these words (which she was kind enough to permit me to share here) which say more about her than any I can reconstruct after all these years away:
What a magnificent soul our Janie is.
I love her husband's best friend with all my heart.
To acknowledge our love and her love for us
Janie made my wedding dress.
She made it to a vision I had.
We bonded and fell totally in love as she wrapped her material, measuring tapes and love around me as she made this dream dress come true.
That is what Janie is for us. Someone who makes our dreams come true.
We love you so Janie.
Your soul and giving spirit has made us all better.
Lynne
Later, I would share a meal with Lynne and her husband (who she met on one of her early faith journeys not long after mine took a different path than hers did), along with another couple and their much-like-Emily daughter who knew Jan from a medieval-recreation group they later became involved in. The dress itself was the simplicity of gorgeousness; later in the afternoon, our high school friend Melanie came in; Mel teaches at F.I.T. and has been designing dresses since she was 15, and even she was blown away by the beauty, the intricacy, the love that went into it.
The afternoon trickle of friends turned into minor flooding, and we wondered how the evening service would hold it all. I saw few other people I knew at that hour other than Melanie and her family, but it didn't matter. We were all bound by the memories of, and the love of and for, a remarkable woman who had touched so many people in so many different ways.
----
After that meal, I checked in- other friends who were staying here had gone to pick up a family member- so again I wound up the first one in before the 7 p.m. sendoff. It would turn out that I was also the earliest- with the exception of one aunt who was able to make it- in the long-standingness of our friendship. I couldn't put a date on it, just that I couldn't remember ever NOT knowing Jan. (Sadly, her father and brother, who had been here earlier in the struggle, went to Alabama to comfort Jan's mother, and when the storm hit they couldn't get back. It either streamed to them or will be seen on a video they made of it.)
The 140-person room had, I'd guess, more than five times that by the time the informally formal service began. (I'd counted at least a half dozen cops among the attendees, so I never expected anyone would blow us in to the fire marshal.) Several other old friends, including one of Jan's oldest and dearest high school friends, had connected by then, but hundreds of others- faith people, medieval people, school people, theater people, who knows how many other circle people- all joined in a common voice to say thank you. And we're sorry. And goodbye.
A few spoke. I was one of them- mainly to sum up the range of experiences and ages and faiths that all converged in love and goodness in this one all too short life. I quoted Jan's own definition of her religion: God is too big to put inside anybody's box. There were poems, and Celtic songs, and prayers to many manifestations of that too-big God.
The guardian angel of her final weeks- an almost-as-old-as-me friend of Jan's with some medical training- came east from Portland Oregon as soon as she heard the word, and helped shepherd her through the ups and downs of the hospital process of the past six weeks. As did Donna's ex-husband, just as much as friend to her. This story, though, was from long ago, at a time when Donna still lived here and she was the one who was sick. It wasn't anything complex or life-threatening, but it came at a time when Donna's cherry tree was coming into its gorgeous, but very short, period of blooming. She mentioned her sadness about missing that life-affirming experience. The next day, Jan and Donna's sons brought her the next best thing: a branch which Janice had taken from the tree, full of the cherries and blossoms and life that meant so much to her friend. They laughed, they played, they showered her with the blossoms in a hospital room, bringing life to a place that oh so often takes it from us.
That was my friend.
At the end, her oldest son, accompanied by his younger brother, sang her favorite song: Fleetwood Mac's "Landslide." In it, and after it, I indeed saw her reflection in the snow-covered (if ground-level) hills of this place we once shared, and which will always be her home. Her ashes will be scattered in her garden, which I have never seen, but which in more blossoming times I surely will.
----
Morning broke with brilliant sunshine, pancakes at the obligatory visit to a local diner-
Gorgeous glass-block dividing wall right inside the front entrance, fitting the retro theme perfectly
- and reconnecting with home, where I now
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Date: 2010-02-13 09:58 am (UTC)