My Special Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches

Picture by Nancy Reeder

My cousin Nancy sent a nice big Easter package with gifts and games for our grand daughter, and there was also a sealed brown paper lunch sack for me. When I opened it, out came a mini-jar of jam and a single serving container of peanut butter, and a copy of this story:

My Special Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches
As a young girl I took many family trips. I have many fond memories of these trips. But it is my own special little trips close to home that I cherish and remember the most.
There were days when I just couldn't deal with things and would want to "run away from home."
My beautiful loving mom would sense the need for me to follow through with my plans. I am sure she realized it was my way of coping with what ever was on my mind that day. I would say to her, "I think I'm going to run away today, Mom." With her sparkling green eyes and loving smile, she would reply, "I can help you pack if you want me to. Would you like me to make you a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?"
Together we would pack a brown paper sack with some clothes as well as make that peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
Mom would give me a big hug and kiss, then say, "I love you," and "You are always welcome to come home."
You have probably figured out by now that I only went to the end of the front porch. She was a very wise woman.
I am 62 years old and dealing with cancer. Yes, I feel like running away, but I think I will have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich instead.

*
You can stop reading this right there if that's enough for you.

I sent this story to several friends with this added message:
My cousin Nancy is fighting colon cancer now, and she knows that my husband and I are going through our own hard times, and she wanted to cheer us up by sending us this story and the peanut butter and jelly. She did.
Her wise, beautiful, mother was my father's sister, my aunt Vivian, whom everyone called Chick. Chick had multiple sclerosis and passed away at the age of 43. Chick was in a wheelchair all of Nancy's childhood, and I can see why Nancy might have wanted to run away sometimes.
As I thought about this, I thought, you know, this reminds me of the emails that come around on the internet, and, just for the fun of it, I'm going to put this out there, and ask the people to whom I send it to pass it on to people who might enjoy it, and then see how long it takes for it to come back to me from a complete stranger who has read it and been cheered by it. Then I can say to Nancy, "Look, your story has been cheering people up around the world." And that might cheer her up.
  Probably won't hurt peanut butter and jelly sales, either.
  Are you game? Two requests: send me an email saying "thank you, Nancy" at:
shipoftuels@hotmail.com,
 and I'll forward it to her, and then please pass it along. The thank yous will tell her what an important person she is, and passing it along - well, we'll see what that does! Thank you!
blessings, love, hugs
Mary
*
Well, I sent that out last night, and as of this morning I've had over 30 replies from people saying thank you to Nancy for this story. I started to forward them to Nancy, and then realized that I would be clogging up her email inbox, so I started copying and pasting replies into a word doc. Then I copied all of them (so far) and pasted them into one email to Nancy.
My cousin Nancy is an extraordinary person whom I have loved, admired, respected, and looked up to my whole life. She has tackled life with good humor against great odds and adversity, and she still keeps plugging away – even when she'd rather run away.
As I read people's replies to Nancy's story, I found myself tearing up. That's not unusual these days; my husband is ill and the challenges of getting along are sometimes dire. But the way people pull together to provide encouragement, inspiration, and love to one another in the hard times – man, that's almost enough to make me revise my occasional conclusion that people are no damn good.
Thank you, Nancy, thank you, everyone who is being touched by Nancy. Sometimes when you're somewhere past the end of your rope all it takes is one person to love you, understand how you feel, and make you realize you're not facing your troubles alone, to help you regain your grip.
So thank you.

Remembering Fran

Remembering Fran

Last night I found a little spiral notebook. I have about a zillion of these floating around, because I carry a notebook in my purse so I can write things down as they occur to me. Often I forget to pack the notebook, so while I’m out I buy another little notebook, and while I’m at it a new pen, because writing with a new pen is a physical thrill to me. Non-writers might not get this, but I’m past worrying about what people think.
So I found this notebook, and paged through it to see if there was anything worth keeping. There was. This notebook was with me about two years ago.
In November of 2006, on the Saturday before Thanksgiving, Fran Gordon died. She’d had cancer for years and had been doing pretty well for a while. The summer before at Strawberry Festival she asked me to sing at the Heritage Museum up in town. She and her husband Dick were deeply involved in the Heritage Museum. The stage was a sheet of plywood set on the ground in front of the museum, with a PA set. I ended up singing a lot of hymns a cappella, and Fran came down and stood on the plywood with me, laying on her alto harmonies. My friend Tara listened, but most of the crowd passed by, some giving us a nervous glance as they went into the museum. We had fun singing those beloved old tunes, leaning into the harmonies, singing and laughing. It was a beautiful day.
A couple of months later she called to say that her cancer was back, and it was everywhere, including her liver. I don’t know if she knew the cancer was growing on that fine summer day. It would have been just like her to know, and to smile and sing anyway. In retrospect, I think she knew that all her treatments were holding actions, buying her time, but her attitude and intention was always, “I’m sticking around.”
That’s what she told me when I went to visit her.
“I want to see David go on his mission, and I’d like to see him get married,” she said. Fran was a Mormon born and raised, and David was her son, who was in high school. I told her that day that if she needed anything, anything at all, like a ride in to chemotherapy, to call me, and I’d be happy to take her.
Because she’s a Mormon, I figured her LDS family would take care of such things, but she did call me soon after and say she needed a ride in to the hospital for chemo the following Tuesday, and could I take her? Of course I could. Now I wonder if she called me because she knew I needed to do that for her.
I showed up that morning and helped her into the car, and loaded up her wheelchair. She was terribly weak, and terribly pale, and said she felt so tired. We talked and laughed on the way into town. We must have talked about a lot of things, but what I remember most vividly was her telling me passionately how she hated the F-word and all its variants and euphemisms: fricking, effing, freaking – all loathsome in Fran’s sight, because the way the word was used and what it meant was so disrespectful and demeaning to women in particular and to all humans in general. I was impressed enough that I avoided using the word or anything like it for months afterwards, out of respect for Fran.
When we got to the hospital we put her into her chair and I pushed her to her appointment. We sat in a waiting room with large aquariums that had fluorescent fish wafting around inside, and I took a picture of her with hair, because she knew she was losing it again. It was already starting to fall out. She planned to have it shaved off, but before that she was going to allow David to decide how to style it before it went.
She told her caregivers how tired she felt, and it was decided that she needed a blood transfusion. She told me that I could go back to the island, and asked me to go pick up Dick at work and bring him up to the hospital, which I did.
The transfusion helped, but not as much as one she’d had previously. We all knew the cancer was winning.
She had her hair done to David’s specifications. It was a multi-colored Mohawk. Libbie Anthony took a picture of Fran with her new ‘do before it was cut off.
Her sisters arrived from other states to take care of her. I went to see her on a Thursday, just a couple of weeks after I’d taken her to the hospital. She was in a hospital bed in the living room, placed where she could look out the windows and see Maury Island and the Cascades in the distance, and all the way to heaven, probably, from her perspective. She was white as her sheets, either asleep or groggily awake. I visited with her family for a while, said good-bye, and left. I don’t know if she knew I’d been there.
Two days later she passed. Her funeral was the following Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. The Mormon Church was packed. Fran had made such an impact on so many people’s lives. She had a way of making you feel like you were the most important person in the world to her. She’d been the president of the PTA for years, she did lights for many local theater productions, and she sang and acted in many of those productions. She was deeply involved in the community, and she was deeply loved.
For months after she died, when I thought of her I felt like falling to the ground and sobbing. It’s such a tough world, and it hurts to lose someone who makes it feel worthwhile to be here. I can’t even imagine what it must be like for her family.
Apparently I went somewhere a few days after Fran died, and I wrote in this notebook – remember the notebook? – while I was on the ferry, and that’s what I found last night:
Nov. 21, 2006
The last time I rode the ferry
Fran was with me
And now Fran belongs to the ages
(“I’m right here with you,” she says in my mind
“I want people to know
I had a good life
And no regrets
You don’t know
I can see it now
It will all be well
And I’ll be seeing you soon.”

My Lord will comfort me through these good-byes
It is a parting for a while
But not forever
You’ve gone ahead
I lag behind
Still you live on
A gift and a song
In my heart and mind

We’ll miss you so
We already do
The question we ask
Is how in this world shall we do without you?
And you say, “Cheer up”
And we see you smile
“You haven’t lost me at all.
Can’t you hear me call?
See you in a while.”

Fran Gordon. What a gift she was. How we miss her.