Jane Burns

I lost a good friend this week. I hadn't seen her in over a year, but prior to that we had spent many hours together, spread over several years, mostly in a second-floor classroom at Westgate Recreation Center. The thing about Jane was: she was present every minute.

Officially she was a student in a taiji class, and officially I was the teacher, but with Jane all bets are off. We were a group of people who met every week to practice and learn together. No one was in charge, no one was entitled to any privileges that others did not have; no one was excluded, degraded, or marginalized. We learned about movement, we learned about health, and I think we learned a little about respect.

Jane stood out as the senior student who never had a senior moment. She was a warrior who gave no quarter and expected none. She was one of a kind, and I will miss her.

When she was a beginner in the art of taiji in the mid-1990s around age 80, Jane was modest to a fault. Her way of dealing with this novel situation was to immediately befriend a shy young woman in the class, making both of them more comfortable doing something new and somewhat difficult. Jane always showed up on Tuesday nights, and it was clear that she practiced diligently on her own between classes. She uttered words of encouragement for her new friend Sue, and when Sue dropped out after a year or so, Jane adopted another reserved young woman, and they became fast friends.

Jane also befriended me. She went out of her way to do me favors, such as buying bulk whole wheat flour at a bargain price and delivering it to me after class. She knew I was a baker and simply found a way to help. Having retired some time ago after a career in the military, she volunteered for many years as a bookkeeper at WOSU radio. She lived with her two Siamese cats in a condo on the far west side.

Once we had known each other for a while, Jane asked me if I would help her trim the trees and shrubs in her yard. We set up a time on a Saturday morning, and I showed up at her gate with my lopping shears. She showed me around the little garden, pointing out her neatly designed assemblage of growing things, and I worked for an hour or so according to her directions. She gave me a glass of iced tea and a sandwich, and I met her cats - or the one who liked stranger, the one who wasn't hiding under the furniture.

So I would come over once a year and cut back the oakleaf hydrangea or the pieris japonica or the star magnolia. We would talk about this and that, and then I would see her next week at the rec center. On one of my visits, Jane enthusiastically showed me where her pacemaker was, just under the skin on her upper chest. "Here, feel it," she said, taking my hand without any self-consciousness and placing my fingers on the round disk just below her left collarbone. She was so happy to have the little electrical device attached to her heart and explained how effective it was in regulating her heart rate.

Jane had mentioned her cardiologist a few times and wasn't shy about discussing her health issues. Following a mastectomy, another doctor had recommended some exercises for upper-body strength and range of motion. Maybe that's what got her starting in taiji. She took up qigong, too, and made that part of her everyday practice. She liked living and being active, so she did what she could to keep going. She also mentioned her late husband Tom a few times. I think he was a career naval officer too.

When city budget cuts forced schedule changes, I stopped teaching at Westgate, so we didn't see each other every Tuesday, but still talked once in a while. I didn't get a return letter after sending her a Holiday card this year, and in February I received a note from her neighbor Mendy, informing me that Jane had passed away in November. She fell and injured her hip, leg, and arm a year ago and went from the hospital to a rehabilitation center, then to a nursing home, and apparently she never quite recovered. According to Mendy, "She simply wasn't happy being in the environment she was in," and truth be told, I can't imagine Jane sitting all day while other people took care of her.

When Lauren Bacall made a brief appearance on camera at this year's Oscars, my first reaction was: that's really great that Lauren Bacall even bothers to go to this event. My second reaction was: she looks just like Jane Burns. And they would be about the same age.