A Beautiful Jan Passed Through This World

Jan's garden

We had such a lovely weekend. It felt like proper summer. The sun high above, a bright, clear sky… And as if the weather weren't enough, there was a "Fun Fair" in the park behind us.

We were at the park both Saturday and Sunday. We had our fill of fun, ate ice cream, the kids went on all sorts of rides, and we even went on some all together. Sunday evening, just as we were heading home, a call came from Debbie. Debbie is the carer of our next-door neighbour, Jan. She said Jan was too exhausted to manage, that they were struggling to get her out of the car and into the house, and that they needed help. Savaş ran over to them and came back a short while later. Jan was so tired she could barely walk. We stayed at the park a little longer, then started walking home. As we turned the corner of our street, we saw three ambulances around the house. Savaş and I caught each other's eyes, and without a word we both wondered, "could it be?"

I quickened my steps. The ambulance wasn't exactly in front of Jan's house, and I tried to convince myself, with a flicker of hope, that it had come for someone else. Then I saw Debbie come out of the house barefoot. Because the children were with us, she said nothing, but I understood from her eyes alone that, sadly, it was. I didn't know what to say in that moment. I just stood there, looking. Debbie said, "I need someone to hold," and we held each other and cried for minutes on end. The children stared, trying to understand what was happening.

Savaş took the children inside, and I stayed outside with Debbie. A while later a paramedic came out and told us that, after their efforts, they had managed to restart her heart. I didn't know what to feel in that moment. I'm someone who can shift to the positive very quickly, but this time I couldn't. I had understood that Jan had left us. They took her to the hospital by ambulance right away.

An hour later her son-in-law arrived and told us we had lost Jan. But I had already said my goodbye before he gave us the news. I had said farewell to my dear Jan. I just stood frozen at the door. Her son-in-law cried, I cried. We looked at each other for a while…

All through the night I drifted between sleep and waking. Ali was coughing so much that I kept getting up, and each time I got up, I remembered it all over again. Each time I remembered, a knot formed in my throat. Every time it sank in that Jan was no longer my next-door neighbour, my heart ached once more. I cried, thinking she would never again call out to me from next door, "Miryeeem." Then I wondered who would look after that beautiful garden of hers. I cried for all her trees and flowers, now left orphaned. I was saddened that Ali would never get to go and say "I love you, Jan." That Jan would never get to turn and say "I love you too, darling." I sat down and cried again over the fact that Zeynep would never again rally Ali to pick flowers from the garden and bring them to Jan. I cried that she would never again bring me the flowers she carried every time she came. I was saddened that she would never get to celebrate the children's birthdays again.

I knew very well what the sight of her lights on in the evenings meant to me. Every time I saw them lit, I would say a quiet prayer for her in my heart. Her being there gave me strength. Last night that light never came on, her laundry stayed hanging outside, her kitchen door never opened…

Last year we lost her husband, Jim. Jan couldn't come back to herself for a very long time. One day she said to me, "Losing your life partner is so hard." She was slowly recovering, seeming to settle into her new life; but I think she was never the same after Jim. In his final days Jim had grown very ill. All their children and grandchildren never left him alone for a single moment. They went through hard days.

That Sunday evening, very shortly after Savaş helped her and went back inside, Jan took a turn for the worse. Before long her heart stopped. She was gone, in her own home, in her own armchair, without being a burden to anyone, without ever becoming frail and dependent. She passed from this world gently and graciously, just like herself.

In the morning I saw her granddaughter at the door; she was looking at the house from outside, trying to glimpse something through the window. After we cried together for a while, she said, "We were all together yesterday, we had a meal together, she was so happy." It crossed my mind that Jan would have wanted to go on a day just like this. After one last dinner with her family, with the people she loved… To go just the way she liked it, at the end of a warm, sunny day, in the cool of the evening, without being a burden to anyone…

I grieve after everyone who passes; but the reason I grieve is always that I fret, "if only she had lived a little longer, seen this too." I lost my grandmother two years ago. I was shaken when she went, too. It felt as though I had lost something from my childhood, from my roots. Even though my grandmother spent her last years bedridden, I still grieved for her. I cried, wishing she had lived a little longer and done more of the things she loved.

But when Jan went, I didn't grieve for her at all. She wanted to go, I know it. She wanted to go to the child she lost so young, to Jim, her beloved life partner. Jan and Jim always used to say: "We've lived a beautiful life; when the time comes to go, one should go." That sentence has always moved me. So it seems that when you live life fully, you meet going with a kind of grace, too.

Whereas when my father, my grandfather, my grandmother went, I grieved for the lives they never got to live. Every time they come to mind, sentences full of "if only" pass through me. But when Jan went, I didn't grieve for her. I grieved for us, for those of us left behind. I grieved for those who would be deprived of that boundless love of hers.

I will always remember Jan with the lipstick she always wore, her colourful clothes, her magnificent jewellery. I will carry on her devotion to nature, to the soil, to flowers. I will carry the love she gave to everyone within me for the rest of my life. I am full of gratitude for every beautiful thing she gave to me, to my family, to my children over these four years. How lucky I am to have been neighbours with this beautiful woman for four years.

I am writing this because it's the only thing I can do. I want you to know this beautiful woman a little, too. Know that a beautiful Jan passed through this world.