Jan's Story (5 page)

I know that Jan's e-mails are not terribly informative. You must simply accept this. She is rather vague about details these days, and she is hesitant about discussing her condition. I think that is understandable. All I can say is to keep sending her notes and I will keep encouraging her to answer them. If you have specific concerns that you want to discuss with me alone, send a note and I'll answer back.

At the moment, Jan is doing well. I can't guarantee how long that will go on, but I promise I'll do whatever I can to make it last. Best from Tokyo.

~Barry

“Never shall I forget the days I spent with you. Continue to be my friend, as you will always find me yours.”
~Ludwig van Beethoven

I would like to believe that I made Jan feel loved every day. It wasn't something I would say just with words. There was always a quick hug or a kiss or a glance over the breakfast table so she could see in my eyes how much I loved her. And when she saw that, she smiled back. Better than words.

I always thought of her as “My Jan,” but that wasn't altogether true. She shared that smile and that optimism with everyone who came into her world. As time passed, the loss of “Our Jan” became ever more apparent. Family, hers and mine, and friends, all began missing her spunk, tenderness, and quick sense of humor.

In an attempt to hold her close and provide comfort, people sent me notes and remembrances of their favorite stories. Little vignettes. Some were stories from the days before I knew her, which I love because they let me see her before there was “us.”

Long before I met her, Jan worked at KIRO-TV in Seattle where she started in 1974. She was one of the first women reporters in the Seattle market. It wasn't too long before Annie Busch Marshall joined her in the newsroom. Annie wrote:

“I met Jan in September, 1979, when I came to work at KIRO-TV as a reporter/anchor. We were fast friends, the only two female faces on the air for an entire year. I had the day shift and Jan worked the night shift. Since it was still the early days of women in the newsroom or the work force for that matter, we were living in a man's world. We both worked to assert our sharp wits, determination and intelligence to make up for our gender and our height. We were both 5'2” tall, or more accurately, short.

“One day, the news consultant came to visit. He watched me anchor the Noon News and asked me why I didn't move around more on the set. He said I looked stiff. The answer was simple; my feet didn't touch the ground. I had to jack the chair up quite a bit to avoid looking too diminutive next to the much taller anchorman. So the station handyman built a box to put under my feet while anchoring. It was plywood, covered with carpet.

“Jan and I took this marvel of a box around the newsroom to get a new view on life and look a few people in the eye at a higher altitude. Jan especially enjoyed standing on the box and speaking with much taller males who preferred to brush off the ‘little girls.' In fact, this added height brought her a new-found energy, and she had some rather pointed conversations. One guy became so uncomfortable with a taller, mightier Jan he told her step down from the box. Jan and I were quite amused by the entire scene.

“A few days later when Jan was trying to make her point about a story with a producer, she went to the set, picked up the box and proceeded to discuss her view while standing tall atop the box. She won.”

I know the feeling of the guy who lost the argument. Jan was the Cute Blonde, but she held her ground well until she won. She was comfortable with who she was, what she believed, and how she wanted to live in this world. If she had a good idea, I quickly learned to adopt it because she was so often right.

Her confidence came from being the oldest, the one who had to watch out over the others when they were kids, and the one they looked up to … except when they thought she was pushy and called her “Bossy” without realizing that she considered that a compliment.

After Jan moved to San Francisco to be with me, we were often visited by her family. There were four younger brothers and sisters, and she was a superhero to the youngest, her brother, Dave.

“Jan was my ‘big sister' with a nine year separation between us,” Dave told me. He didn't have much time growing up with her; when Jan went off to college, he was still in elementary school.

When Dave was in college, he visited the Bay Area for a lacrosse tournament at Stanford University. Jan was working at the NBC station in San Francisco, and Dave was excited about coming up to visit—even if his appearance managed to scare nearly everyone who looked at him by the time he finally reached us. “I took a lacrosse stick to the mouth and received a lovely swollen and bloody lip that looked like an apricot hanging off my lip” he remembers, a tad painfully. “The night before going to see you and Jan in San Francisco I'd slept on the lawn of teammate's parents, so my hair was standing up on end. I hadn't showered after our games, and my lip was looking ohso good.

“When I got to the TV station downtown, I'm sure the security guards thought I looked like someone down on his luck and who'd had spent the night living rough on the street. Luckily Jan came bouncing down the stairs, gave me a big hug and then laughed at my appearance.

“She gave me the keys to her car and directions to their house. After a long shower and a nap, we went to dinner, laughed way too much, and I was on a jet home the next day feeling very grown up having experienced San Francisco thanks to my big sister.”

I wish Jan could remember this moment, when she made her little brother feel so grown up. She never stopped to consider that what she gave so naturally could mean so much to others. To her, this was just being a good sister and nothing unusual about that.

I envied that in her because that is something hard for me. She could give without the expectation of getting anything back in return, and I treasured her ease at being a great big sister, or a good friend, or a wife who loved me despite my many faults. She was a natural.

There were many times when she gave me that unquestioned love. She took it with us when we started our move from San Francisco to our first tour in Tokyo, and then on to Moscow. She joked that we had gone from Japan, a country in the 25
^th
century, to Moscow still mired in about the 18
^th
.

Part of that feeling was brought on by the gloom of Moscow. Lights were expensive and hard to come by, so only one out of every two or three streetlights worked. On a dark winter's night, the gloom spread wide. It was the same in people's homes. They would sit by the dimness of a single lamp because light bulbs were scarce.

So gloom was not something she would accept from me, especially on January 14, the day I turned forty. It was winter, cold and dark outside, which matched my mood. Turning a decade older, which was how I saw it, made me feel that I should have accomplished more in life. Or worse, that the best years were those already lived. I was busy moaning and looking in life's rear view mirror. All I wanted was to hide under the bedcovers and feel sorry for myself.

This was not for Jan. She decided the event wouldn't pass unnoticed or uncelebrated. Over our Christmas vacation in the US she secretly bought forty birthday greeting cards. All day long, despite my best efforts to ignore such a dreaded milestone, the cards popped up. On the breakfast table. In my coat pocket. In the bathroom, living room, bedroom. On my desk in the office. It finally had the desired effect. I forgot my gloom about aging and ended my endless conversations with anyone who would listen about being over the hill, and just laughed.

Jan had always been the one ready for a new adventure, the one ready to suggest a trip for us or with the girls and ready to laugh at me when I worried about the cost. But when we moved back for our second stint in Tokyo I noticed that Jan was changing. We didn't really realize why until she was finally diagnosed. Emily sent me this note remembering those days:

“We were going out to dinner one year at Christmas and I think we might have been trying a new restaurant. By then, it was unusual for us to go somewhere that Jan didn't already know well. Julie and I were getting ready, dressing up and wearing makeup we bought at the 100 Yen store (like the dollar stores in America), and Jan was supplementing any items we might have needed from her supply of makeup.

“As Julie and I stood facing the mirror, Jan coached us from behind while we applied our makeup. I remember her explaining all about how to do our eyes to make them look bigger, the way to put blush on your cheeks, and even some lipstick tutorials! It was one of those mother/daughter type moments, and it felt really good.

“At that point I think I already knew we weren't going to have Jan forever and so I treasured the happy moment.”

“I'm sorry,” Emily told me later when we talked about those times, “but remembering this makes me sad.”

When we first left America for our overseas odyssey, we got homesick. So after a few years we scraped together some money and went to a place we loved, a development called the Sea Ranch. It's about three hours north of San Francisco by car with houses built along a ten-mile stretch of the Sonoma County coastline.

Whenever we could arrange a vacation there from the various places we lived, we would call up old friends from San Francisco to come up the coast and be with us, to walk the beach during the day, or sit in the hot tub and enjoy the starry nights.

John Carman and I worked together when I got a newspaper job fresh out of college, then we went our separate career ways. He later ended up in San Francisco as the TV critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, and we reconnected when CBS News moved me there. He was among the first to meet Jan when she moved to San Francisco to be with me, and he was among those we often invited to our Sea Ranch home. I had forgotten this little episode until John reminded me.

“I had a dog, a white standard poodle named Peabody, who occasionally had his own way to express his exhilaration about life: he bounced. It was close to a straight-legged vertical bounce – boing! boing! boing!

“One weekend I drove Peabody up to your ocean side home in northern California. Peabody was a city dog. Sea Ranch promised new discoveries and sensory overload. I suppose I'd cleared Peabody first with you two, but I still worried you might privately harbor strong objections to a sizable and excitable dog in your home.

“From the moment we pulled into your driveway, Peabody was in doggy demon mode, boinging up and down around a brush area that surely reeked of deer scents and other exotic doggy delights.

“We entered the house. Peabody boinged through the doorway, skidded helter skelter across your brand new laminate floor, tumbled to an uncontrolled stop in front of his human hosts, and peed on the Pergo floor. I had one of those infinite moments of mortification. I looked at Jan, whom I knew to be a neatnik. On a detailed scale of unwanted introductions to my pet, this would occupy the penultimate rung.

“Jan threw her blonde head back and laughed. I think she laughed for about five minutes, or however long it took for my heart to resume its regular rhythm. Soon afterward, Peabody was back outside, boinging with abandon along the bluff overlooking the Pacific, at the back of your house. It seemed he might take one great, happy bounce over the bluff and into the ocean, but he managed to stay on land. As I recall, you and Jan watched and seemed to genuinely enjoy the show.

“It was Jan who set that tone and saved the day. What's a little puddle compared to such a striking demonstration of the simple joy of living?”

     
A careful medical interview detects clear-cut deficiencies … decreased knowledge of recent occasions or current events; impaired ability to perform challenging mental arithmetic—for example, to count backward from 75 by 7s; decreased capacity to perform complex tasks, such as planning dinner for guests, paying bills and managing finances; reduced memory of personal history; the affected individual may seem subdued and withdrawn, especially in socially or mentally challenging situations. (Seven Stages of Alzheimer's Disease from
www.alz.org
, the Alzheimer's Association)

There was another slow but steady change … Jan was losing interest in meeting new people. When we moved back to Tokyo in 1995, the list of friends started out long, but in a few years ended at almost zero. Part of this was living overseas. Most journalists and business people are sent to a foreign posting for two or maybe three years. We made friends with other new journalists who, like us, had just moved to Tokyo.

Then they moved on, as did the neighbors in the apartment building who were our buddies. In two to three years almost all had left. But we stayed. As fresh faces showed up, it was harder for us to connect. We were not the new people dealing with a strange new place. We had dealt, thank you, and our interests had moved on. Our excitement quotient for exploring the usual first timer “must-see” temples and tourist sites was nil.

A few friends with a deeper investment in Japan stayed on for several years, yet in time they all finally left. It was a natural process. We were the odd ones for staying. And it seemed almost natural to run out of the energy needed for investing in new friendships. The next group of new arrivals, like the last, would just move away. Jan and I were not alone in this. Others who spent extended time overseas have had much the same experience.

And here is what I didn't want to see as it unfolded in front of me; Jan was a naturally outgoing and friendly person, well-liked by everyone around her. Yet despite that, she did not object or even react as our social life began to shrink. For a while, we lived next to the Tokyo American Club, a place with a gym, swimming pool, restaurants and numerous social groups. I asked Jan if she wanted to join the women's groups that sponsored day-trips. This would be an easy way to reach out and find new people who might become new friends.

No, she said, she wasn't interested. I accepted this and didn't push. After all, we were doing okay. I thought this was just us being self-sufficient, that we were enough for each other in life. I thought of it as an affirmation of our love.

In fact, it was not being self-sufficient at all. It was isolation closing in on us as Jan's brain ever so slowly closed down. Through these years we would return to the US to vacation at our home in northern California as often as we could. Jan loved being there.

And our friends there noticed, far sooner than I, that Jan's joy of being with other people had taken a slow and sad turn. Mary Alinder is the former assistant and biographer of Ansel Adams and one of the few people I know who considers the late chef and author Julia Child a personal inspiration, except that Mary can cook as creatively as Julia ever did. Dinners at her home are an event. Her husband, Jim, is a much-published photographer whose subjects vary greatly from panoramas of Paris to the landscape of California's north coast. The Alinder Gallery in Gualala, CA, sells fine, rare photographs, specializing in the work of Ansel Adams.

When I asked Mary and Jim what they saw in the last few years, this is what they shared:

“Jan defined the terms ‘sparkling' and ‘vivacious,' and she was certainly whip-crack smart, but she had never been one to dominate the conversation, rather adding a rare, appropriate comment that enriched that moment. Since we only saw you and Jan every few months when you came to your Sea Ranch home on vacation, one would think we could better sense the progress of her disease. Perhaps it was her radiant smile that fooled us for over a year. There came a time at one evening's end when we looked at each other and said, ‘Did you hear what Jan said? It didn't make sense,' dismissing her off-the-wall remarks to mishearing.

“Her wonderful grin began to look pasted on. She spoke out with increasing rarity and sometimes what she uttered was spot on, but that became rarer, and her silences lengthened and deepened. She concentrated on the activity and banter about her with great focus, trying so desperately to hang on to the present and the reality of what was happening.

“It was an exhausting effort that lasted for shorter and shorter periods but she fought ferociously to be ‘normal' for those times. We treasured those moments. We wish we had better honored her strength and determination, but we did not want to shatter the version of Jan that she heroically constructed so that she still could be one of us. The last time we saw Jan, she had become her own shadow.”