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EPILOGUE
We had a promise to keep.
"It'll be a fun place for my ashes," she had said
of the garden
of Dairy Cottage. It was a hard thing to do, to open the small box
and to touch the pale, grey powder. We kept putting it off. But
one morning as the sun broke through the clouds and the garden
came to life after a heavy rain, with the grass glistening and the
water lily opening its petals in the warm light, we both knew
that the moment was right.
We walked through the grounds arm in arm, remembering
the
places she liked best: the grassy slope she used to lie on to catch
the sun, the pond where she would sit for hours watching the fish
and the moorhen, the stream where she used to play with Richard.
We thought of how Jane had walked there for the last time, just
after Dr. Sullivan had told her the truth. As we retraced Jane's
steps, we halted at the places where she had stopped as if she had
been trying to fix them in her memory. We took handfuls of ash
and scattered them in an arc through the air, like a peasant scatter-
ing the seed. We threw them on the flower beds, under the old
yew trees, over the water. The wind blew the particles in a wide
circle as they fell. Little flakes settled on the roses. The soft
powder lingered on the surface of the pond, near the willow tree
Jane had helped to plant, before sinking slowly to the bottom.
Then it was all gone.
We cried a little. But Jane had begged us not to
mourn her. "I
don't want anyone to be unhappy because of me." That was all
very well, one of her friends had said, wiping a tear, but it
wouldn't be easy.
It took a few weeks to organise the party that Jane
wanted.
She said it was to be a happy party, to make up for the birthday
she had missed while she was ill. She had given some thought to
the invitation list: her friends, she said, and all the people who
had helped us during her illness. Everyone came—Dr. Sullivan; the
Brighton bank manager who had given his time to a project that
never materialised; the families who had opened their homes and
their hearts to us when Jane needed human warmth between hos-
pitals, not a rented flat; the hospice people who were not on duty
that Saturday afternoon; and, of course, Jane's young friends.
One of them had said, "It will be a vegetarian meal,
of course."
This seemed to create a huge problem because many of the guests
were meat eaters and might not enjoy the food that Jane's own
crowd liked. Would it spoil the party for them? Could Rosemary
cook the dishes that had been Jane's speciality? But the problems
melted away when several of Jane's friends announced they would
come to stay for the weekend. They would cook, help to get the
house and garden ready, prepare the punch.
So it happened that the party began long before it
was due to
start, as the best parties do. The kitchen was full of cooks. In the
hall the punch was mixed without a recipe but with plenty of
ingredients and a lot of enthusiasm, and another group was ar-
ranging tables, chairs, benches in the garden. In the middle of it
all a neighbour arrived, barely visible behind a huge bucket full
of roses from his garden—tall-stemmed flowers, strong and healthy,
with many blooms to each stem. "Would you like some more?"
he asked, and soon the whole house was full of colour and scent.
Roses lay on the tables, on the chairs, on the floor. Everybody
had heard about the rose Jane wore in her hair until she died. The
hospice people talked to her friends about the Jane they knew at
the end, and learned from them about the younger Jane they
hadn't known. Victor spoke briefly, insisting that Jane was in no
way special, that surely her friends knew that—it was the hospice
alone that had made her peaceful end possible. She had been there
only eight days, but they had been days full of life, full of mean-
ing.
It was a good party. There were no tears. People
broke up into
small groups and talked not only of Jane but of dying, of how it
can be made bearable, of their own fears and hopes. Her friends
were happy for Jane and proud of her. There were none of the
stilted formalities and embarrassed condolences of a funeral. This
was not a wake. It was a cheerful thanksgiving, not just because
Jane had wanted it to be so, but because she had provided the
theme that made this possible.
When we went back to Washington at the end of the
summer,
we became aware of a change in ourselves. We were thinking far
more than ever before about what really matters in life, about
feelings, about the more abiding human values, about people-
people as individuals. Jane talked of all these matters in her last
weeks, and she made them more real to us than they had been.
She also took pleasure in passing on her more cherished possessions
to her friends. She gave a lot of thought to it. She liked to see them
walk away with something she had given them, after they had said goodbye.
"I don't need a 'thing' to remember Jane by," said
one of her
friends. "Jane taught me how to make bread. Whenever I make
bread, I think of her."
Before she died, we had talked of how people live
on in what
they do, in their actions, in the memories of those they have in-
fluenced. That was how Jane hoped she would live on. And she
will.
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