Shortly after Janet passed away in September 2015, I found a document she had written called "In the Event of My Death." If she told me about it, I had forgotten for we weren't thinking in terms of needing it any time soon. In this document, Janet requested that her ashes be spread in Sunset Bay which I did with friends on October 24, 2015. She also requested a party. In order to give family and friends time to plan for this event, I scheduled it in April 2016. Many people told me they wanted to come, but life was getting in the way. I was very pleased that about 60 of our good friends and relatives were able to attend. It was a nice party and Janet would have approved.
When cleaning out Janet's belongings, I set items aside that represented some of the things she held dear in life: Sponge Bob Squarepants, Big Bang Theory, her acting trophies and other items that I thought people might like to take as remembrances of Janet. I was pleased to see that almost everything was taken by one person or another.
I also wanted us all to share memories of being with Janet and I'm pleased that so many people did get up and tell a story or remembrance of something that happened. For me, it was how we met and our first golfing adventure together. For others it was her singing, her teaching, her zest for adventure, her willingness to try anything new if it seemed like it would be fun, her love of people and love of life. It was a wonderful afternoon where many of us discovered parts of Janet that we hadn't known about before.
Photos really don't do the afternoon justice, but for those of you who weren't able to attend, and for those of you that would like something to look back on, I share some of the photos my friend, Steve Leibrand, took that afternoon.
Friends began to arrive shortly before 2:00 PM. Here we have Patti,
Margalee, Tully and Jonie. Linda and Sitka are looking over the items I brought for people to take and I'm by the door as people arrive.
Jeanine, me and Deb. They were with me the evening Janet passed away. Deb is a geriatric nurse and had she not recognized the signs, I would have been off at the play Janet was supposed to be in that evening. Instead, we were all there when Janet drew her last breath and was finally at peace. I shall forever be grateful to them both.
The Black Market Gourmet put on a fabulous buffet for us. Anyone who went away hungry had only themselves to blame.
Some of Janet's things. She loved Sponge Bob Squarepants because he was kind. She loved acting and teaching too. She flunked out of college her first time around because she was much more interested in acting than doing her work. After her time in the Peace Corps, she discovered what she wanted to study - Linguistics. When she went back to school for this, she excelled and graduated Summa Cum Laude. She took her knowledge into teaching and all of her students loved her. I received emails from former students around the world when they found out she had passed away.
A more recent obsession of Janet's was the Big Bang Theory. She loved the comedy and excellent writing for this show. She watched it almost exclusively and didn't care that so much of it was reruns.
She also loved moose, herons and sea otters. She said once she wanted to come back as a sea otter. I'm not sure if that was still true once she started to be in love with moose. What is the plural of moose anyway? Mooses?
Mikki and me. Mikki painted the beautiful portrait I had of Janet at the Celebration. That portrait now hangs proudly in my living room. Mikki and Janet worked together at SWOCC in the Adult Learning Skills program when Janet was teaching ESL and GED. I am thrilled that she agreed to do the portrait for me. Sadly, Mikki's health was not good and she passed away September 10, 2016
Getting things started - wine glass in hand for courage. I showed a series of videos that I had put together from photos. The first was Janet and her family from photos when she was only a few months old to her last years. The second was Janet and friends. It took us a long time to make friends in Coos Bay, but those friendships and the ones we made in RVing Women during the last five or six years are among our most treasured. The last was Janet and I during our 20 years together - the best 20 years of my life.
Friends listening to stories about Janet.
Janet was also very artistic. She drew a caricature of our first golf outing. She's hanging on for dear life, I'm driving the cart like a maniac and clubs are flying everywhere. This hangs in my room above my door where I can look at it every day. She actually substituted for a friend of hers at Disneyland one time, doing caricatures.
Terry is a friend from Cambria and Janet's days at Hearst Castle. Janet was a guide at the Castle for some 21 years, mostly in the summers. She always said it was the best job of her life.
Terry told the group how Janet had traced the provenance (history) of the mantle in the Assemblyroom of Hearst Castle to the Chateau in France that it was taken from. People at the Castle thought the chateau had been destroyed in the war. People connected to the chateau thought the mantle had been destroyed. When Janet showed the French architect working on the chateau's restoration photos of the mantle, they both cried.
When she retired from the Castle, her retirement gift was a minature of the mantle (right). I gave this to Terry as she knew what it all meant to Janet better than anyone else.
Jim, Janet's little brother, was probably the most devastated at her passing. They were very, very close. He was her baby and she loved him dearly. He, his wife Sherry, two sons, Gavin and Trevor, and Gav's fiancee, Cassie, were all here.
Janet's birthday was April 20th, the same as Hitler's. That bothered her a lot. What bothered her even more was when Jim got to have Earth Day for his birthday - April 22nd. I don't know if she ever forgave him for that, even though it was not his doing.
Jeanine and Janet met on AOL even before Janet and I. They were pen pals for a while before I moved to California. Then, one weekend, Jeanine and her friend, Nola, came to visit us. Jeanine's story had to do with Janet driving for hours to pick them up at a relative's and then, just a day or two later having to take them back because Jeanine's dad had a heart attack and she had to get back to Portland. That's the kind of person Janet was - she would drop anything and everything to help her friends.
Veronica was one of Janet's ESL students. When they first met, Veronica was working on her GED and wanted to apply for citizenship. Janet tutored her for the GED and made arrangements for her to take the writing portion in Spanish. She passed! Janet also helped her with some of the paperwork for citizenship and now Veronica is a citizen and her husband has his green card and own business - a success story for sure and Janet played a large part in it.
Janet became friends with Leatha through their mutual love of theater. They were both very involved with the On Broadway Theater during its hey days. Janet was in several productions there including one of the Nunsense Musicals where she was Sister Hubert to Leatha's Sister Robert Ann. Janet was also very well known as the Fairy Godmother (right) when she acted in "Cinderella".
She also found a young playwright's version of the story of Jekyll and Hyde and directed that at On Broadway. The author, Joe Edkin,even flew out for the opening and stayed at our house.
Leatha invited Janet to take on a small role for the production of "The Full Monty" last fall at Little Theater on the Bay. Janet was so thrilled to be active in theater again - I cannot tell you how happy that made her. Sadly, it was not meant to be as she had the first of many strokes the night of the first dress rehearsal.
Sarah was Janet's boss at the college when Janet taught conversational Spanish and Spanish 1 and 2 on campus. Sarah shared how she had learned so much more about Janet during this afternoon of sharing and how she wished she had gotten to know Janet outside of her connection at the college.
We met Karen when she lived here in North Bend. She moved up to Portland a few years ago, but we've seen each other a few times a year since then. I asked her to share the story of Janet's last motorcycle adventure.
When younger, Janet's chief mode of transportation was a motorcycle. I can't imagine riding it from Oakland to Cambria or LA to Cambria - each about 500 miles one way. But she did more than once as she worked weekends and summers at the Castle. There's one story where she impressed a whole bus full of tourists as she was riding up the road to the Castle to her job. The bus had signaled her to pass and she accidentally popped a wheely as she was doing so. She was just glad she didn't dump the bike. When the bus got to the top of the hill, the driver told her the whole bus full of people applauded her for that move.
So Janet got in her head that she would like to ride a bike again and Karen was willing to oblige. She showed Janet how the controls were situated and told her a little about the surrounding streets. So, off Janet went. Then I realized she didn't have her cell phone and we had no way to contact her if she got lost. She didn't have Karen's number or any way to call. After a few minutes, we thought we should look for her. Then we suddenly saw her go by several blocks away - riding ramrod straight and looking neither to the left or right. Evenutally we caught up with her and got her back. She knew she was lost, stopped to ask someone who was no help and just started riding again - confident that she would find us eventually. That was Janet - independent and trusting that everything would work out and as usual, she was right.
As Janet's long time friend, Judy, shared with us in a letter she sent because she was unable to attend:
"If I had to describe Janet in one word I would call Janet "authentic"...probably the most authentic person I have ever known. She had no artifice, she never comprimised her values to please people, and she gave freely of herself to all her friends...
God broke the mold when s/he made Janet. No one I have ever known has come close to matching her individuality and her generosity. I am sure that somewhere she is still singing and that she is surrounded by a happy group of angels who love her as much as we all have."
