Dear Janelle (#2)

May 3, 2012

Dear Janelle,

You have been "gone to California" (my new euphemism for "dead") for exactly two weeks now.

It is really weird to be writing an obituary for someone whom I don’t actually believe is dead. It’s fun to think about you and to remember so many good times and funny stories about you. To think about what was important to you and how much you genuinely cared about people and issues that mattered to you. So many of our memories of you revolve around laughter and singing. You’d like that, I know.

But the reason that we’re all thinking about you is that we don’t have you with us anymore, and we’re trying to encapsulate your life in a few hundred words or so. Not a single one of us has actually come to terms with that yet. You had such a joie de vivre, such childlike wonder at the world around you, you were so *alive* that none of us can imagine you not alive. "Janelle" and "dead" just don’t belong in the same sentence. It’s an oxymoron. The very essence of "Janelle" is "alive."

So, I sit here, writing your obituary, waiting for your return from California.

In fact, Rusty and I have been exchanging e-mails as we edit your obit. A question came up about exactly when you moved to the East Coast. My recollection is that you first moved to Atlanta and then migrated to Tennessee, where the Boy was. So, we’ve been trying to decide at least a year when that happened, if we can’t conjure up the exact date. As I wrote my last e-mail to Rusty on this subject, I thought, "Well, let's just settle this by asking Janelle. She'll remember exactly when she moved out here."

Sigh.

Dave D. says, "You never get over it; you just get used to it."