A Beautiful Light

“A beautiful light is going out in the world.”

So ended today’s email from my mother to Brett and me informing that an ostensibly dormant cancer had returned and will allot only a “few more weeks” to one of the best friends she and our family could ever hope to have.

My mother has known Jane Zugenbuehler more than half a century. I have known her as long as I can remember, and she has known me longer than that. I realize most who are reading this do not know her at all, which is unfortunate for most who are reading this.

Her face always seemed to bear and inspire a smile; her wit, humor, and zest for life were unparalleled. In a word, Jane was fun.

Much as Jane Thrift adores Bill Zugenbuehler, I have to think a small part of his large appeal was that he offered her an escape from a maiden name that was far too parsimonious for her abundantly generous personality.

Our lives have few constants. Friends and acquaintances often drift in to adorn (or mar) specific episodes or even many years, then are carried away with the tide of time, not to be seen again.

For almost fifty years the friendship my mother shared with Jane has been a fortress amid such flux. Waves of change nourished rather than eroded their relationship.

Of course, Jane is more than a friend; she is family. I feel as though I am losing a favorite aunt.

She seemed always to be present at the major milestones. Births, graduations, marriages, deaths: Jane was never far from any of them. What mattered to us mattered to her.

The monumental events in our lives, by virtue of the simple fact of them being our lives, became signature events in hers. She would never dream of missing them.

To ease my cross-country move to Sacramento upon graduation from Georgia Tech, Jane and Bill offered the hospitality of their St Louis home. The day Rita and I were married several years later, Jane was among the small group of my mother’s longtime friends with whom we had a wonderful celebratory evening of dinner, drinks, and delight.