Jane

My friend, Jane, died.

Just writing that down makes me cry. Lots of times though, I think about it like it’s a thing that happened during the day like any other thing. Like Lydia got in trouble at school. Or like Vivi broke her glasses. I might tell Dave about it when he comes home and be really upset about it for a short while. Or I might think about Phil and the kids and realize how awful it is and just cry.

My friend, Jane, died.

She died of a brain tumor that she didn’t know she had. She went into the doctor with a headache. Five days later, they operated. The next day, there was hope. And then the next day, she died. Just like that.

When I was little and bored in church, I used to imagine as hard as I could what it would be like to be the person sitting just in front of me, to the left. Or to the right. No matter. I didn’t try to imagine what she was feeling, or what her life was like. I imagined wearing the clothes she was wearing, seeing the person next to her out of my own peripheral vision, viewing the room from her chair. Sometimes it worked so well that I would feel a momentary lapse of time and space, and I would startle to realize I was actually sitting in my own seat.

That was a little game I used to play. I wish that it meant I grew up to be a really empathetic person, who could imagine herself in another’s place, but did not.

It is not hard for me now, however, to imagine myself in Jane’s world. In Phil’s place when he goes home for the first time after the funeral, and has to put the kids to bed alone. They cry and ask for Mom. And after, the house is silent. Silent except for the roaring wake of everything she last touched.

I don’t think it is hard, because Jane was my friend. She was like me, only a little younger. She was married to a man who is my husband’s friend. She has children like I do, only a little younger. She was like me in some ways, and also not at all, because she was her own person, unique in all the world, and she is gone. And it is nothing but awful and hard. And I can’t wrap my mind around it.

The morning that I learned about Jane I was reading my Bible. It is a “daily” Bible, with readings for each day arranged like this: long Old Testament reading, short New Testament reading, part of a Psalm, a few Proverbs. I like this formula. It is a little bit of everything, and it is neatly organized by the day, and I never have to open the holy scripture and think “What should I turn to today?” It is just there. And in fact, I have been reading it for a few months now just like that. Like it is just there. And maybe this accounts for why I have been having particular trouble with the Old Testament. As a kid, I would read this stuff and even then bring some sort of existing paradigm to it to explain the strange, the bizarre, the horrible. I have a lot of trouble with the parts where someone does a wrong thing, and offensive thing, to the king and then said person’s whole family, including wives, children, servants and servants’ families, are all slaughtered. I find it disturbing. I find myself reading, and then praying, “WTF, God? Really?” I mean, in not those exact words, but basically the same sentiment. (And let’s be clear, God knows what I am really saying.)

So, I’ve just had a lot of questions lately anyway. Without people I know and relate to just randomly, unfairly, tragically dying.

That morning, June 21st, I was reading the prescribed words when my phone beeped beside me on the living room couch. “In a moment,” I thought, since I was almost done, and kept reading the Psalm. One of my favorite scriptures, Psalm 139. And it said:
“You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb. You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed...”
When I was done reading the whole beautiful Psalm, I answered the beep and read, “She passed away. Jane is in heaven.”

“No!” I replied.

“Yes,” wrote Johanna. “It’s done.”

In fact, it had already been done. Jane was gone before I got up that morning, before I remembered what had been on my mind the last few days and began praying again for her recovery, for a miracle. And she was already gone before I paused over those words, “Every day of my life was recorded in your book...”

I wanted to throw the book across the room. Now the senselessness that I had been struggling with suddenly became very personal. Of course God knows everything, knows all about us from the day we are born through to the day we die. Of course he knew Jane would die this day, just shy of her 32nd birthday, and that the thing would come like a thief in the night catching everyone off guard. “All our days are numbered,” I thought, and I began to sob.

Usually when we say someone’s days are numbered, we mean that her time is up. Most of the time, this phrase is delivered as a threat. It means something like, “I’m only going to tolerate you so much longer...” It fits in nicely with a dark sentiment that I carry around with me which waits anxiously for the hammer to drop, which suspects that Tragedy is lurking around the next corner. If only I can stay alert, I will be more prepared when it strikes. If only I worry just enough, I will not be taken by surprise. With this false understanding, I approach every corner cautiously, with my back against the wall, sneaking up on my invisible aggressor. Then, ever so slowly, I crouch down and tense up, and “Ah ha!” I spring forward into the darkness to expose Tragedy, only nothing is there. Nothing. And then I relax and take a deep breath and thank God half heartedly for my life and health and the life and health of my family, and really, thank you Lord ever so much for not smiting me where I stand for having so little faith. I am only half-hearted about it, because I feel like I was really the one taking all the initiative to make sure by my worrying that everything would be okay.

Usually, if I were praying for someone who had cancer, this is how I would pray. I would ask for healing, but I would pepper my request with clauses to cover all the possible what-ifs of the situation, because it is an uncertain world. The rain falls on the just and the unjust alike. Sometimes God intervenes in what is the natural consequence of our action or the natural, awful pattern of the world. Sometimes He does not. I wrap it all up with some variation of, “Thy will be done,” but what I really mean by that is, “I’m terrified by this situation, and I’m even more terrified that I will ask for something great and not get it.”

Our days are numbered, and we know it.

But I think we have perverted this verse if we only see it this way. We can only think and function inside of time, and we are afraid of endings. This Psalm talks of God’s intimately knowing every part of us, forming us in darkness, seeing us before we are born, familiar with all our physical details, knowing our thoughts, and our days and moments are accounted for and precious to him as the details that make up who we are, before we even exist in this life.

Jesus described to his disciples how they should not worry, because nothing escapes the knowledge of God, who cares for us and knows us intimately, saying, “And the very hairs on your head are all numbered...” (Matt. 10:30) He accounts for this detail in much the same way as he accounts for our days, and they are precious to him.

In this way, I see Jane’s days not cut unfairly short, but unfolding like pages of a book, all a part of her like her sparkling green eyes and her crooked smile. They are precious to me, and to all who knew and loved her. We want to try and save them, write them down, capture them somehow, to wrap them up and give them like a gift to her children, because we are inside of time, and it is all we have.

So now, as I shower, get dressed, scramble an egg, write down these words, and go through my day, I am thinking of my time differently. There is no alarm that could sound at any moment. There are only moments, the putting of one foot in front of the other, and God knows my every footfall. He knows my fears, my anxious imaginings, and how today I miss my friend. And I can imagine myself where she is, outside of time and space, in the arms of God, until I startle and realize that I am sitting here, typing this.


1000 Memories of Jane


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