Sitting on our front steps in West Shore Park
With a pal at Hawthorn Mellody Farms zoo.
Me between Jane and Bet, my beautiful Sisters.
My Sister Jane passed away in late August. I’ve been giving it time … to think about her and what having her be my sister meant. I could never put it all into words, but I must share her as she was so good to me and our family and her many, many friends.
Aside from a nurse attending my birth at Condell Memorial Hospital in Libertyville, Illinois where I was born one hot July morning, Jane was almost certainly the second human being to hold me in their arms. Incredible when I let that sink in. She was four years older. I can imagine our mother, Ruth propping Jane up on a chair or with a ‘nest’ of arms to safeguard us both and my sister expertly comforting me as I blinked into one of the most beautiful faces ever. Both of my sisters were beautiful. The younger one, Bet, came after me by one and a half years. Bet packed so much into living. Anyone whoever came into her orbit knew that. She was remembered more wisely and perfectly by her daughter Cayce at Bet’s funeral in 2017 than I could do here.
Jane was my first mentor for me on many things. I shall always recall her teaching me how to spell “Mississippi” with that childhood song like repetition trick. I can recollect looking out the huge picture window of the bedroom into a pitch-dark Illinois sky as she went over and over it again with me until she was satisfied. From that time I’d now always have it ‘by heart’. She also taught me how to throw a baseball which I could never launch as far as her one summer day out on the expanse of the deep green lawn outside Mama’s kitchen window. I’m sure she enjoyed the lesson from her vantage point doing dishes or stirring a pot.
We were a ‘Girl Scouts’ family. Mom led a troop. Both Jane and Bet were in that group. Because Mom taught life skills in a summer camp, “Camp Potawatomie” I was brought along and was ‘mustered in’, just one of three boys allowed to be there. Those three weeks each summer were a blessing I’ll treasure always. Learning how to light a campfire, how to whittle with a ‘Bowie’ knife, how to trek through the woods singing girl scout songs with Jane teaching me the words and melodies.
In my teen years the mentoring continued. She taught me how to drive. Being the kind of car it was it required the driver to shift gears. I don’t how she stayed so calm as the car lurched and bucked as I tried to get the tricky rhythm of hitting the shift pedal versus the brake pedal and moving from gear to gear often causing that horrific grinding noise when done incorrectly. I almost took out a row of mailboxes during one of these lessons. That must have scared the daylights out of some in our neighbors! Jane gave me a steady gaze and intoned, “Let’s try that again”. And one snowy ‘no school’ day she taught me how to make chocolate chip cookies on the little griddle of the stove in the home we shared with Bet, Mama, and Nana overlooking Diamond Lake. Me amongst those three amazing ladies. I was quite spoiled by them as the sole male, no doubt.
I’m not sure how Jane swung it but in 1968 she went off to a junior college in faraway Honolulu. That was a big stretch for any person from the small lake community we grew up in. So exotic and grown up! To my everlasting luck she invited me to come out to hangout that summer the day after I graduated from high school. I was not quite 18 and still quite naïve. She introduced me to her new friends in the tropical paradise city. I got some ‘rites of passage’ there I will also always rejoice in. Hawaii proved to be too expensive for her. She returned to Illinois and took up classes at a junior college near our home. The ‘College of Lake County’. I had just entered freshman year at Northern Illinois University. Jane was hanging out with a local guy she’d known since grade school times. He’d just returned from a tour of duty in Vietnam. They routinely would drive me back to the town of Dekalb where the college I was attending was located in, about 90 minutes to the south of our town. This went on for a few months.
His name is Jeff Hagel. He became my hero. He was so full of life’s stories and also possibly the smartest person I’d ever known. We would get a case of beer for the ride and chuck it in an ice chest. The drinking age in Illinois was still 21 then so I felt another level of luck to be in his company. It was clear he preferred to talk on any topic but the war. Jane and I respected that once we understood. Instead, it was a lot about books to read, music to listen to and philosophy. Jane was often the person behind the wheel. Magical times.
Jane moved to Arizona once she married her second husband. She continued to work for the phone company completing 30 years of it. Then she switched to following a passion long deferred. Culinary Arts! You can probably imagine how much that brought on a new bond for us. She was so happy being in that atmosphere of learning and then teaching. Life came full circle. Jane told me that being a cooking schoolteacher was ‘the best job of my life’. I’m so grateful she found her calling.
Her health declined very rapidly at the end. Suddenly when she was leaving this world. Cayce, who had cared for her with incredible devotion for the latter years of Jane’s life got in touch with some of Jane’s former students. They came to visit and pay their respects. Cayce told me how beautiful it was and the joy their presence brought Jane. We will go out to Arizona to join Cayce, and we will have a memorial gathering. Now she’s in Heaven with her our little sister, and others who once were here. But Jane is still teaching me and still making me marvel at this gift of Life.