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."

Dear Janelle

May 1, 2012

Dear Janelle,

I know that, wherever you are, you are happy. You went out like everyone would like to go out. It was peaceful and painless. We all agree that it was absolutely the best thing for you, and the way you would have wanted to go.

For the rest of us, though, it has been very hard. In my opinion, a person should not just leave like that. Without saying goodbye or telling anyone. It was quite a shock. It’s rude, even. Actually, you did it like the way you went to bed during parties. You just quietly slipped away because you didn’t want the fun to stop just because you were going to go to sleep.

But still.

I mean, we weren’t done with you yet. I had things to talk to you about. No, not anything specific that I can think of right now. I mean, in the future. We had all kinds of stuff to talk about. And laugh about. And make fun of. And cool words to marvel over. Plus, we hadn’t finished figuring Mikey out yet.

And what are the Burkes--especially the Knoxville Burkes-–supposed to do now? You know how disorganized and incompetent we are. We can each barely take care of ourselves. We certainly can’t take care of ourselves and mom and each other. I can do the communication part, like I’ve always done. "Hey, everyone, next Thursday is the anniversary of mom and dad’s anniversary. Mom would probably like to go out to dinner and/or get a phone call or something that day."

But you were always the one who organized the actual plan. If it hadn’t been for you, we would have never gotten the folks’ 50^th anniversary celebration off the ground. We would have started too late, for one thing–if at all. We Burkes are not planners-ahead, as you well know. In fact, we’re not even that good at planning when the moment is absolutely upon us. You know how you always hated all of the standing around in the driveway, with everyone saying, "I don’t know. Where do you want to go?" You’d finally get mad enough that, in spite of your resolve not to be the one to make the decision, you would say, "Okay, dammit, we’ll go to Sullivan’s." (Or wherever.)

You were the Burke Herder. We couldn’t plan our way out of a paper bag, and you know it. You have really left us in the lurch. I mean, honestly. It’s been close to two weeks since you died, and you know what? I haven’t called my mother even once! I keep meaning to, but then I forget.

You don’t just go and die and leave a bunch of Burkes behind to plan a funeral. Good grief! We have no idea what we’re doing! If it weren’t for Patti, Michael and Maryl would’ve never even gotten out to California. Thankfully, one of your friends has the planning gene and used it on our behalf. But I already tried to talk her into taking over the care and feeding of my mother, and she didn’t take the bait.

When I look around your house, I see all of the things you left undone. Because you were coming right back and would attend to them then. You were apparently sorting all of the most recent mail and bills on the dining room table that y’all rarely ever used (for dining, that is). You had more flowers to plant.

You didn’t like the idea of leaving a mess behind when you died. You had told me–jokingly–many times that that’s why you hadn’t committed suicide after you and John C. got divorced. You couldn’t think of a non-messy way to do it (to do it right, that is), and that meant that some poor soul would have to come along after you and clean up the mess. So, what the hell, you decided. Might as well live.

Well, this time, you didn’t decide to live. You decided to leave. (Did you even know?) And here we are. Bereft.

Hummmppphhh. (As you would have said.)

The Phone Call

One phone call can change your life.

“You have a new grandbaby!”

“This is the highway patrol. We’re sorry, but your son has been...”

“I asked, and she said yes!”

"Congratulations! You're a winner!" (You should hang up on this one immediately.)

The call came at 1:49 p.m. on Thursday, April 19. It was from my brother M. Usually,  M's wife, Janelle, would call me if we needed to discuss something. But I knew that Janelle had left just the day before for California, to help her brother care for their father, who is in the hospital with double pneumonia, and their third stepmother, who is in a different wing of the same hospital, suffering from kidney failure. Janelle, a caregiver at heart, had been here last weekend, with my and M’s mom, who was also in the hospital. Mom is doing much better, and Janelle felt that she really must get to her father’s side as quickly as possible. It had been a long hard week for her brother and his wife.

So, when my brother called and said, “Janelle’s dad...” I filled in the rest of the sentence myself. Has died. Oh, I’m so sorry for Janelle and Butch. My brother repeated himself: “Janelle’s dead. She died in her sleep last night.” We did a long round of me saying things like “What?” “I don’t understand.” “You’re not saying that right. You mean Janelle’s *dad*.” “I don’t believe it.” And M saying, “No, you heard me right.” “No, I mean Janelle.” “I don’t understand either.” and “I don’t believe it either.” His voice was as calm as if he’d called me to tell me about the progress of his vegetable garden.

M had that same conversation at least 20 times on Thursday. Having to calmly repeat the information that his wife of 28 years had died, across the country, just that morning. He had to repeatedly try to convince each person he called that the news was true, though he hardly believed it himself.

We all gathered at M & Janelle's house throughout the day. Family, longtime friends, co-workers (M's, Janelle's, and their "adopted" daughter's), anyone who knew and loved M and Janelle. There was a never-ending--and welcome--stream all day long and late into the night. They brought food, love, comfort, stories, grief, and disbelief.

This post is not for the purpose of eulogizing Janelle. That will come later. This post isn't even about grief, really. This is about shock and disbelief and the ability of the human brain to suspend reality.

Because Janelle's death happened all the way across the country, and none of us had any physical evidence that she was really dead, the idea was completely abstract, and surreal. 

All day long, my brain grappled with this concept--for that's all it was--that my dearly loved sister-in-law really was dead and that I would never see her or talk to her on this earth again. 

At first, my brain would not even allow such thoughts. Any time I tried to entertain them, I would unconsciously shake my head or blink my eyes to get rid of them. Any time that someone referred to Janelle in the past tense, any time I thought, "she's gone." any time that I saw her things around the house (and she is all over that house) and thought, "she won't be back to enjoy them," I would shake off the thought or think, "That's just wrong."

That feeling, that this just wasn't right, that it couldn't possibly be true, that everything was all wrong, persisted for all of us, all day Thursday. It made me marvel that the human brain, presented with factual information, could completely reject it and cling to a comfortable untruth. We use the expression, "I can't wrap my brain around this…" all the time. On Thursday, it was quite true. None of us could wrap our brains around this new, unwanted information. We knew it to be true. We knew that Janelle's brother was reliable and that there was no reason why he would perpetrate such a cruel lie. So, it had to be true. But it wasn't right. It didn't fit with anything we knew about Janelle. It just couldn't be true.

Janelle planted flowers in her garden last weekend. She hugged M at the airport when she left, and told him she'd see him next Saturday. She had plans for the near future, she'd be back, she had a job to go to, she had more flowers to plant, kitties to feed, friends to drink wine with. She wouldn't have just left all of that.

I have so many questions. Most of them for Janelle. I need to talk to her about this. I need for her to walk into the room and make sense of all of this. But there seem to be no answers.