Today is my friend Jane's birthday. We celebrated a number of our birthdays together in Puerto Vallarta including her significant big five-0. Jane Perna died of breast cancer July 10, 2005. She had battle the disease into remission twice since I'd known her. She gave the third episode a courageous effort.
As a breast cancer survivor, Jane was a fearless travel companion, with an unflappable spirit and a practical outlook. We traveled in Mexico together a many times and sometimes found ourselves in some unusual situations that many would consider dangerous. A year after her first diagnoses and treatment, along highway 200 on the Pacific Coast, we gave a third class bus driver a name we of a town we wanted to go to. The driver stopped we got off. The bus pulled away and we found ourselves next to a rickety wooden bench on the side of the highway surrounded by jungle, not a building much less a town in sight. We later learned that the town we were heading to had a completely different name than we had thought. The experience developed into something akin to a scene out of Apocolypse Now. We headed down a jungle trail toward what we hoped was a beach town, or the very least a beach restaurant. As we rounded a curve, loud rock music poured from the black window holes of moss covered abandoned buildings high above the jungle trail, followed by the appearance of men in fatigues watching us from afar. When I pointed out the obvious, we were in a vulnerable situation, Jane said, "Look at that yellow butterfly." Then added as though it were the same subject and held the same weight of importance to her, "I'm not wasting any of my life on fear."
Several years later, Jane was recovering from a masectomy, when we went to Mexico City for a few days with a long list of museums we wanted to see. We had an equally long list of warnings from friends about the biggest city in the world; the food, the water, pickpockets, theives, assaults, don't go on this street, don't walk in this district, don't ride the bus, don't ride the subway, don't take the taxis. We stayed a block and a half from the main plaza and the cathedral, which we had been warned against, and took in five museums in two perfect days. Each day we made a plan of how we would carry our valuables.
Then came the day we would go to Freida Kahlo's Blue House in Coyoacan. It was too far to walk from our hotel. Which mode of public transportation should we take, having been warned against them all? Finally, we decided on the subway, known as the Metro, as the method that was the least complicated. Jane was considerably shorter than I. On the Metro, where there had been a problem with pick-pockets, we planned that if we had to stand, I would hold the bag with our money, passports, etc., in front of me and she would stand in front of me.
On board the Metro we assumed our positions and began scanning the other passengers watching for potential theives. We bumped along for a few miles, watching passengers get on and off, and just as I was relaxing, Jane jammed her elbow into my ribs. "What?" I was alert once again. She whispered loudly, "Look at that woman in the first seat by the door." The woman about forty years old, wore a beige suit and heels. She had her purse open on her lap, held a compact in one hand and was applying makeup with the other. A professional commuter on the way to work. In a disgusted tone, Jane asked, "How is this any different than riding the subway in New York or Boston?" Since I'd never done either, I couldn't be sure, but Jane, an easterner could. "It isn't! I've had enough of this. I'm going to ride the bus back from Coyoacan and I'm going to eat in the mercado."
I called Jane "The Reporter." I was the writer, but she but me to shame as a fact finder, especially about people. After chatting with someone for thirty minutes she would know more details of their life than I had learned in years of knowing the same person. She was never afraid to ask a questions. She should have been a journalist.
In September of 2004, she visited me in Santa Fe. She'd been diagnosed again, this third time with involvement of her organs and was already being treated. She said she would be on chemotherapy the rest of her life, a challenge of managing discomfort while maintaining quality of life. Some people she said had lived as long as 18 years in this way.
Jane's, son a talented musician was playing with his band, Anti Balas, in Santa Fe. We went out to hear them. At two o'clock that morning on the way home, we came upon an accident on a dangerous stretch of highway under construction near the Santa Fe Opera. The road was closed and we were informed that we would have to wait until the accident was cleared to pass through. Waiting was too much for Jane's curiosity. To my horror, she got out of the car and walked to the accident scene. I loss sight of her small white head in the blinking lights and the shadows of emergency workers and policemen. Surely, I thought, they will send her packing right back to the car where she belongs.
It was a good ten minutes before Jane returned, because Jane seemed to belong everywhere. She had the details, one car accident, one mortality, speed seemed to be indicated, but there didn't seem to be alcohol involved. She described how it had happened as though she had brainstormed with the investigating officers. "Gary said that as soon as the county coroner arrived they would move the car and we would be on our way."
"Who's Gary?" I had to ask. Gary Gonzalos! He was a sheriff's deputy, who grew up in Los Alamos, had two children and had been with the sheriff's department for three years. Sure enough, within a few minutes a car marked Santa Fe County Coronor came slowly along the shoulder of the road past the line of waiting vechicles.
Jane's disease management program did not take her through 18 years, but only nine months. I wanted to believe that her curiousity and her passion for life were enough to keep her alive, but even those testaments to a courageous spirit could not check a disease that was determined to take her. That February the cancer had moved to her bones. I knew she had a significant doctor's appointment one day in February and I called her from Puerto Vallarta. She was on her way home from the appointment and pulled over to tell me the news. It was the only time I ever heard Jane cry.
As hopeless as her situation seemed to be, she did not let it stop her from following her son and his band to Amsterdam that Spring and coming home full of details to share. I couldn't begin to list the things I learned from Jane. If the "here after" is anything like it was painted for us in Sunday school, I imagine Jane Perna is standing with St. Peter getting the details of every arrival's passing, as soon as they pass through the pearly gates.
Copyright © 2007 by Martie LaCasseLabels: Breast Cancer, Celebrate Life, Jane Perna
