About Notes From Jane

The notes from Jane began coming only days after she moved off to the west in her search for peace and joy. They continued for years without discernable pattern. I might not hear from her for a month and then get two notes in a week. It was very rare to go more than a few weeks in between contact. Sometimes, it would be a postcard or a short note usually written on a scrap piece of paper and stuck in an envelope. The envelopes would show return addresses that included such things as “Under the Blue Moon”, “By the Gray Rock”, “Back in the Middle Again”. Postmarks were almost always somewhere new from various small-town post offices throughout the west.

In addition to the postcards and the notes in envelopes, she sometimes sent little drawings and photographs taken with the old Yashica box camera I gave her. I have also included my recollection of conversations with her, for sometimes, she would call–usually in the “wee hours” of the night. Those calls didn’t happen often and were never really true conversations. She would call and usually quietly say “Talk to me, Mikey”. Then she would often not say much else. I knew she only picked up the phone when she was really down; when she needed to hear a friendly voice. I would talk to her carrying on a one-sided conversation, never asking questions: telling her bits and pieces of things happening in my life; of things relating to our friends; and sometimes read from pieces I had recently written. Rarely did the calls last more than a few minutes. A very few times, I could hear a sob or ragged breath and know she was crying. At some point, she would quietly say “Thank you” or “Love you” and be gone.

I’m not ready to talk about a lot of details yet. At least some of these will come with time. It should be obvious she is troubled. I will only say that this beautiful, creative, joyous, soul was filled with life and blessed those around her. Then evil came and stole her joy. I am tiptoeing around that and have chosen feeble words to refer to the cruelty that was inflicted. More of the tale will come as I can bring myself to tell it. There was much more than losing her son. The horror that went with that event is not lightly revealed.

Taking these old notes & postcards and typing them now is not always an easy task for some memories come with razors and unexpected blows. I really don’t want to tell you what a baby I am about all this but I will confess, there are more than a few paragraphs that came with a price to pay.

The notes from Jane are coming. They will be in no certain order. . . No, that is not true. They will not be in chronological order. They will be in the order that I received them. I realized later after the notes had been coming for some time, they were not in the same order as she wrote them. There’s no way to know why they came in the order they did. Maybe the thoughts were too raw at the time of writing. Perhaps they had to ferment in her thoughts. Who knows? They came when they came and the pattern seems to fit the tale.

Right now, it is hard to believe that these almost random thoughts and painful memories can ever work their way into something coherent. Far too many are painful to read and, after a while, make you not want to read any others. I understand that. First, I will get the important ones in place and then I will stitch them together with the rest of the story. There is meat to add to bits and pieces. There are plenty of fun times, silly times, too. It would not be the full story without those. I have made myself blue at times as I read through the sad notes but then smiled to myself when my memories turned to how our world was most of the time. For the sadness was usually in the background and not in your face as these notes are.

With time much more will be brought to light but some of it is not something that can just be blurted out. I hope you see the beautiful spirit; her joy; her humor; and the promise her life had to offer. There is no doubt that you will also see her pain. I can’t help that for it is an important part of the story. A story told in bits and pieces with notes from Jane.