Jane and Jesus

This time of the year, the Christmas season, takes me back to one of the most remarkable relationships I’ve ever had in my life–my friendship with my chemo comrade, Jane.  In my sick season memoir, I refer to her as J.R. and she is the only person who has her own chapter (“The Trench Light”).  As people who know me really well know, we were both diagnosed with cancer at around the same time and met during treatment.  I was 39 years old and she was 69 years old; I am from a relatively rural area of North Carolina and she was a true city girl who hailed from Brooklyn, New York–and yet we could not have been more similar in so many ways.  And we both agreed, more than once, that it would be really hard to wish away the cancer we were diagnosed with because our meeting and subsequent and most beautiful friendship came about as a result of that very ugly thing.

I eulogized Jane almost two years ago, and I’ve written about her more than once before then and since then.  She’s just the type of person you never get tired of talking about.  She was so full of life, so full of love, so full of laughter–pure joy actually.  And she loved Christmas more than any child I’ve ever met and thus I now seldom see a sprig of holly that does not prompt me to remember my dear friend.  One of the things I miss most about her is how just being in her presence or even just hearing her voice somehow served to increase my level of certainty regarding God–how true he is, how big he is, how good and loving he is.  She had a belief, a faith, so strong that it carried her through a lifetime of trials, years of treatment for stage four ovarian cancer, and a peaceful “change of address” from earth to Heaven.  I very much aspire to have such a steadfast, unwavering faith and such a joyful, childlike spirit.

Jane used to call me her friend, the “professor,” which always made me smile (and feel a little like I was on Gilligan’s Island).  She had never been able to pursue a formal education and always seemed impressed by mine.  She was by far the better teacher though; and she had “smarts” that greatly outweighed my own.  Another thing I really miss about her, especially this time of year, is how very much she seemed to believe in me and in the fact that God had a great plan for my life.  I could never see it and still can’t many days.  But, she somehow could and she never stopped telling me so.  We all need people like that in our lives, people who make us more sure of God and of ourselves, people who can see a better version of us than we’ve ever been able to.

Yes, knowing Jane is one of the main reasons I cannot find a way to completely regret meeting cancer.  One of Jane’s biggest fears was that the cancer she was dealing with would get so bad that she might say or do something that would make God appear to be something other than good, something other than love.  She never did.  She spoke of and sang about and even dreamed at times of his Goodness and his Love.  He was so very big in her; and the more difficult things became, the bigger he was.  She used to always say, “Jesus loves you too, but I’m his favorite!”   The affection between Jane and Jesus colored every single thing about her.

When I spoke at her service I said that the biggest thing we had in common was that we had both fallen in love with the same man, that God-man named Jesus the Christ–the one who laid down his royal garment to enter into this warped world through the tender flesh of a little baby and the one who would grow up and allow himself to be stripped down again, stripped of his very life just to give us ours back.  How could we not fall in love with such a man?  There’s never been another like him nor will there ever be again.  Christmas makes me think of Jane for so many reasons, the greatest of which is Jesus the Christ.