Current mood: bummed

Hi everyone,

I lost a good friend at 3am on Friday morning.

I am still not sure why God took her from this earth when she fought so valiantly to stay here, but I knew she was gone when I awoke to a horrible, gut-wrenching, heaert stopping wail. The keening came from the condo two doors down and I knew it was Janice's daughter, Ella.

And I knew. I just knew that my 37 year old friend Jan was gone.

Three months ago, Jan took her daughter to Europe to celebrate a clean bill of health after a double mastectomy. They took a month long tour through Croatia and she asked me to watch her cats. They weren't supposed to be gone a month. It was supposed to be two weeks, but Jan ran out of money and flying by the seat of her pants, she dragged her daughter from one place to another...I started to worry since I had replenished the cat food many times and was surprised she hadn't called me once to check on her critters.

She'd forgotten to mention she had a fish and I almost killed it through not knowing it was there to feed it.

I tracked Jan down at her friend's house on some island in Croatia. This came after some detective work, going through her phone bills. Nobody had heard from her and Ella's school was worried, Jan's parents were worried and then I got her on the phone. 

She cried that she had no money to come home and her dream trip had turned into a nightmare. I called her ex husband, of whom she always spoke in the harshest terms, and he immediately wired Jan and Ella funds.

Admittedly, I was pissed when she came home after almost five weeks. It had been an ordeal worrying about her, tracking her down, not letting her animals starve. And believe me, I was thanking the gods and goddesses of slimy beasts everywhere that the fish survived the worst fish-sitting experience on record.

When Jan came back, she came over to thank me and I was still pissed about what had happened. I railed at her for a few minutes and then:

"I have a lump on my neck," she said. "Feel it."

It was a hard, huge bump on the nape and I just stared at her. She found out within days that it was an aggressive tumor. She was riddled with cancr. I was shocked at her sudden, painful deterioration and three days ago I was astonished to see her emaciated and bowed down in a wheel chair. Her ex husband had once again come to her rescue and was taking her for chemo.

"I want to live for my little girl," she said. "I want Ella to have her mother."

Only God had other ideas.

This morning, we all gathered to say goodbye to Jan at Forest Lawn and although I have known her many years as my neighbor, I was overwhelmed by the outpouring of love. Hundreds and hundreds of people crammed into her memorial service. Gay, straight, young, old...she had remained friends with everybody she ever met.

Turns out she once forgot to tell another neightbor about a pet rat and a pet snake. I apparently got off easy. The previous pet sitter thought the rat was supposed to be food for the snake. Ooops.

Everybody had funny stories and the one thing, the singular, unbreakable thread than ran through every single one of them was how Jan never gave up. She never stopped loving life. Even until her last day, she fought like a tiger.

Through it all, my eyes remained on her ex husband, who in spite of everything, still loved that crazy women who took his kid to Europe on one way tickets thinking she'd get back home somehow...

I am glad Jan and I remained friends, that I did not allow my frankly justifiable anger come between us. She must have known in some weird way that her time short and was determined to take Ella on one last, mad fling...and now,the world is a less whimsical place for her loss.

And her daughter, lovely, Goth-wearing, David Bowie loving Ella has lost the one person who always told her that it is essential to lead with your heart, to always believe in miracles.

Today. as I looked at the slide show of family photos of Jan as Green Day's "I Hope You Had the time of Your Life" played on the stereo system. I couldn't see straight after thirty seconds. That anybody with such a voracious appetite for life could be denied the chance to spread just a little more of her personal brand of magic is truly cruel and so very, very wrong.

I hope when she got to heaven, Jan gave God what-for. Somebody needs to remind him that not everybody good should die so young.

Aloha oe,

A.J.

Currently listening : First Take By Roberta Flack Release date: 1995-09-19