So I rented "Life is Beautiful" last night. It was great. Even tho Guido was a bit eccentric, he gave life his all with an incredible childlike mischieviousness. Whether or not it was purely fictional, his mind set is something I've been missing.
When I crawled into bed after the movie I noticed I had a text message from a friend, and that my phone said "80% txt full". So I decided to delete some messages. I had quite a few, some silly, some needed...
my last message which would have been my first was from Jan... it said, "Thank you! Everything is going great!"
It was the last message I ever got from her. Two weeks after she left, I was walking and saw something funny, I pulled out my phone to txt her and realized I couldn't. Seeing that message last night after watching that movie, made me think she had created a game for her friends as her gift. Now Jan never played games, she told it like it was. What I mean is that she didn't let on fully to those around her how sick she really was. I could see it sometimes, and I wonder if she knew I knew, or did I play the game well enough? I think she wanted people not to worry about her, to be able to live her life as she did before she got sick, to just live her life. We often talked about how lucky we were in life, we never took that for granted.
So, Jan's gift to me...
she taught me how to stand up for myself, that it's ok to say the things that are necessary in life, because I don't say or do things maliciously. She was always telling me I was too forgiving, that it was ok to be angry, it was okay to let yourself feel. Actually feel it, don't dismiss it... as I often did. To wear tighter shirts and shorter skirts...this lesson I didn't always follow thru very well on.
I miss her lots.
1 comment:
Did I ever tell you how Jan and I got to be friends?
She LURKED my blog about three years ago, and commented on one I'd written about Dia De Los Muertos. See back then on myspace, complete strangers could comment on your blog even if they weren't on your friends list. In summation, we shared a geekery on the Mexican Day Of The Dead, which falls right around my birthday. FFW>> to fall '06 Athena, Missy, and Sam are keeping me posted on her condition. I was planning a trip home right around that time as well. Unfortunately my boss pushed me to stay through mid November, and before I knew it, she was gone. But as I recall, she passed right around, if not ON Dia De Los Meurtos,/ a day shy of my birthday. That day I went to a real Dia De Los Muertos celebration at Sepulveda Mission in downtown Los Angeles. Sepulveda Mission is the original settlement in what is now the City of Angels. And it was, one of the most breathtaking things I've ever witnessed. It is literally a celebration. Not something black or morose. Truly beautiful, and I think that's the way she would've wanted it for everybody.
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