Saying Goodbye

Janae Beau White Eagle was an incredible woman. She died just four days short of her 66th birthday. Born on the day Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Janae slipped out of this life quietly in the hours between one day and the next. No one was there with her. A nurse checked and Janae was there, and when she checked again my friend had gone.

Janae lived long enough to visit with her beautiful daughter and hold her precious grandbaby. Janae loved that baby deeply and dearly, even before he was born. She had time to be initiated into another level of her religion. She lived long enough to welcome death when it came.

Janae was a remarkable woman, self-made in many ways. She was an incredible artist and in recent years had earned her living as a professional quilter. Janae's quilting was incredible. The lucky quilters who have her stitches on top of their quilts own nothing less than a work of art.

At the end, we who loved Janae did our best to surround her with love, even if we couldn't be there all the time. Even though she seemed to be drifting, already halfway out of our world, I know she understood that we were there. I read from her holy book and sang a prayer for her that is important in her faith. We all told her we loved her.

Mostly we held her hand or stroked her hair or just sat beside the window in her room, watching the days grow shorter and darker.

And then she was gone.

Some of us gathered and toasted her memory with hot cider and cookies. Two or three three of us were hard about the work of emptying her house. We fulfilled the wishes of her will as best we could. And still had a house filled with things.

The sorting and boxing and labeling and such began before Janae died. It will be done for good Wednesday when Goodwill comes to take away the remaining boxes and bags. I don't think it will be sad. I have said my goodbyes. It hasn't been easy, spending hours at a time in her house, touching her things, listening for her laughter. But I have talked to her, I have sat in her house and cried until my eyes ached. I think now I can bear to let go of the last of her things.

Janae believed that we are all born over and over until we get it right. And that we share each lifetime with the same people, but in different positions. Maybe next time your husband will be your sister or you will be your aunt's mother. In many conversations, Janae and I came to agree that undoubtedly we had known each other in previous lives. We only shared this life for a year, but it felt like we had been friends forever.

I hope Janae was right. I told her that. During those last days I told her that, with her getting there sooner than me, she has to put the word in with the big Boss. No more of this stuff of finding my friend and then losing her so soon. This has been too hard to bear.

Next time, in the next lifetime that Janae and I get to share, we have to meet sooner.

Love in a Time of Loss

Right now a woman is lying in a nursing home not far from my home, asleep and unaware.

She is my friend, and she is dying. A few months ago she stopped taking the chemotherapy that was turning her skin into on huge painful blister. It was the fourth round of chemo and was only intended to postpone the inevitable. Four month without more chemo, they said, and that seemed like such a long time. But that was three months ago.

Last week Janae and I planned Thanksgiving dinner. She was bringing yams with pineapple and pecans and marshmallows on top. I told her we'd give her a ride if she didn't want to drive. No problem, she said. It was Wednesday last week, nearly a lifetime ago.

Friday I got a call that she was in the hospital. Saturday morning I opened the door to room 622 on the Oncology Wing expecting to see my Janae sitting up, commanding the nursing staff from her bed. Instead I found her tiny and gray, curled under the blankets, sleeping so deep it seemed she was in another world. When she finally woke, she told me where to find her will. How to call a friend in another city. Who should get her pearl jewelry. She fell back asleep every few words and I had to wake her to finish each sentence.

Is it drugs? I asked the nurse. She shook her head.

You know the head shake. The one that comes with the tight smile and the set facial muscles. You see it all the time on television medical dramas just before the words "I'm afraid the news is bad."

The news is bad. The disease that has eaten her kidneys and swollen her liver so big it has pushed her stomach out of place has found its way into her brain.

Amazing things have a way of happening when life is short. Old friends find their way to the hospital bed. Estranged family members remember the love and fly into town. Good people find time to visit someone they never met for love of a friend. Through it all, flurries of emotion and care-taking erupt and subside all around while Janae sleeps at the eye of the storm.

Everything has been done that can be. All the phone calls have been made. The lost children have been found. We are all watching Janae together now, holding her in our hearts while starting to let go, praying her passing will be easy and peaceful.

Today I will spend Thanksgiving with my husband and sons and a pretty girl named Kait who will find it difficult to make it through dinner without holding my younger son's hand. Janae will not be with us.

Instead she will be three miles away, hard about the business of dying. It isn't easy to watch. Janae's body has more life in it than most. I fear that it won't let go without a hard fight. But in the end, the body will give way. It always does.

Janae's faith instructs that when her soul leaves her body it will be rejoined with the Inner Master and then will find its way into another life, one that will be better for the hard lessons learned while ensouled in Janae. I hope she's right. I hope that her soul's next life will be as part of a large, close, loving family. Maybe my soul's next life can be a next door neighbor.

Sometime tomorrow morning I will drive to the nursing home. I will sit beside the narrow bed by the window in Room 29, holding Janae's hand and telling her stories of Thanksgiving day. I'll bring some bit of stitchery to show her in case she opens her eyes. I'll tell her to hang on a few more hours, long enough for her daughter to arrive with Janae's newborn first grandchild.

I will leave her then to her sleep, to the kindness of Hospice caregivers, to the hard business of cutting the cords that hold her to this life so she can fly to the next.

Sweetness and Light

Life is sweet right now

My husband has taken time off work and we are spending days together in that way people do when they've been together a long time. Sometimes we can't get enough closeness and the next bit we find that we're tripping over one another. It's good. That kind of time creates small moments that are wonderful. He finished the gate today while I poop-scooped the yard. We were together and it felt right.

Yesterday we drove all over, looking for places where he can finish hikes into the mountains without climbing through someone's backyard. One day we bought fruit. Another day we went to Leavenworth and bought me a hat.

Life's minutiae is sweet. During these times, pain just is. We both know the pain sits on my shoulder, but we agree unspokenly to ignore the beast. All daily activities are planned around my afternoon nap, which is sacrosanct.

Maybe it's the lingering light of fall days, or the surprise of looking up to see that a single branch of the poplar tree went golden over night. Whatever the reason, these days glow. Asters are blooming in all shades of pinks and purples, the flame bush is in its glory now.

I wonder sometimes if that pathetic little bush that clings to life through spring and summer, finally managing to cover itself with leaves at the end of the season, knows that only the fall display of scarlet leaves saves it from the compost heap?

So I hurt. It's there under everything, on top of everything. But not so horribly today that I feel the need to whimper and rage. The concession is that life is quiet. There will be no late-night drive over the mountains for a movie in Seattle, no staying out in the cold watching the fall sky turning to winter.

Instead, I'm about to go upstairs and make tea for two people. I think we will drink our tea while walking through the garden, one more time, spotting a place that needs more bulbs and a plant that needs dividing and the surprising turn to scarlet of a cranes bill geranium leaf.

Then I'll sleep and maybe dream about the autumnal turning. And breathe in this sweet time while it stays.

Peace and Blessings