On October 3, 2020, my little great-niece Jane (age 3) passed away unexpectedly from leukemia. She had been diagnosed 3 weeks early and had spent those 3 weeks in the hospital with limited visitors due to COVID-19. The day after she came home and was able to spend an evening with her siblings and parents, she laid down on the couch and passed peacefully.
Jane spent a lot of time next door at my sister’s and brother-in-law’s house (her grandparents). So Dave and I would see her every now and then. She was a pure joy and a precious light in the world. In her short life, she taught me the greatest lesson of all.
I keep thinking of the day back in May when our granddaughter Lyanna came for a visit from Utah. I took her next door to my sister’s to meet her cousins. Almost all of my grandnieces and grandnephews were in the pool having a fun time.
Lyanna was being a bit shy with so many kids she didn’t know. She wouldn’t leave my lap. The kids said “Hi” and continued to play in the water. But little Jane came up to Lyanna immediately and chatted with us. She kept bringing Lyanna toys. She never left our side, being the little hostess. I was so impressed by her genuine caring and kindness. But that was Jane… a ball of love and light.
She’d be playing outside with her cousins and siblings and come skipping over to show us her new princess dress or some boo-boo she’d acquired. If I was inside she’d make a point to ask Uncle Dave if she could come see me. There were always big hugs and I love you’s. And I was always sad to see her leave.
All of my great nieces and nephews are such loving, sweet angels. They have been a great comfort to me and Dave. I feel so blessed to live next door to them. Having to say goodbye to sweet little Jane breaks my heart. But even more than how it’s affecting me personally, it feels unbearable to imagine what my sister and her husband are going through as her grandparents and what her parents are enduring and her other grandmother. I keep thinking of Ebenezer Scrooge’s question to the Ghost of Christmas future when he showed him the Christmas where Tiny Tim died,
“How can we endure it?”
“Scrooge,” Charles Dickens
The only way to endure it is to go through it … to feel it… to pull together in love and look to Jesus Christ for comfort and hope of a glorious reunion. As Russell M. Nelson said:
“Mourning is one of the deepest expressions of pure love. It is a natural response in complete accord with divine commandment: “Thou shalt live together in love, insomuch that thou shalt weep for the loss of them that die.” (D&C 42:45.)
“Moreover, we can’t fully appreciate joyful reunions later without tearful separations now. The only way to take sorrow out of death is to take love out of life.”
Jane’s life is an example to me of someone who loved completely, fully, nothing held back. I want to love like that. If we all loved like that, what a wonderful world it would be!
What if we learned to see each other as children do? They have no agendas, no judgement, no criticism, no guilt-tripping, no shaming. They are sweet, honest, pure love. For 3 short years of living, I have a feeling that this little angel has taught me the greatest lesson of all.
