Janie

Janie showed up in my life at the perfect time when I needed her most. Janie was probably the best massage therapist I’ve ever gone to because she saved me. My friend Sarah sent me to her when a counselor I was working with suggested that some bodywork might help me move forward in my life. So I called Janie. 

Janie wasn’t what I was expecting. She was a heavy set woman, maybe a little older than I was, with a very country way about her. I wouldn’t have expected her to be someone interested in being a massage therapist. That was definitely my judgement and it was totally incorrect. Janie had an intuitive quality and she seemed to know right where you needed touch to let things go. 

The first time I saw Janie I cried the entire time. She didn’t say a word, except, “It’s all right. You don’t need that anymore, let it go.”  The next time I went I cried half the time, then a quarter of the time. I continued to see Janie for many months. After we’d gotten to know each other she laughed and said, “I didn’t think you’d come back after all that cryin’ the first time.”  Janie helped me empty my heart  and body of all the pain I’d been carrying around. I can’t even tell you what all that pain was, but I surely know some of it. Either way, it doesn’t matter. She helped me lessen my load.

I hadn’t seen Janie for a while, and then one day she called and made an appointment to come see me at the cancer center where I was working sharing Jin Shin Jyutsu with patients. She’d been recently diagnosed with cancer and had just begun treatment. It was my turn to give back to her. We worked together with Jin Shin Jyutsu through her treatment and beyond until her passing.  

Towards the end, I’d drive out to Lawrenceburg to treat Janie in her cabin home that hung over a ravine surrounded by a deep forest. Her bedroom window looked out into the trees. It felt like being perched in the branches like a bird.

I asked Janie how she became so good at massage therapy and why her treatments seemed so different from those I’d had from others. First she laughed again thinking about my first appointment and all my tears, then said  “I just listened to the little Buddhas. Those guys just always showed up and told me what to do and that’s what I did. They guided me.” This country girl was a spiritual force.  

As Janie move closer to death she insisted that I take her massage table as a gift. Her table was a special one with a hydraulic lift that could raise and lower to make anyone comfortable and she was proud of it. “I’m not going to die til you pack it up and get it out of here.” She meant business and I didn’t want her to hang around and suffer, so I made quick plans for a truck to help me get it from the cabin to my office. A week after that, Janie died feeling the breeze through the window, looking out into those deep woods.

Janie always did things her way. She had a humor that never left her. At her funeral, one of her cousins got up and told a story about being on the Keeneland bus heading to the carpark when he saw Janie climb aboard, definitely a little lit. “I can take on any one of you. Who wants some!!” she shouted with glee. She was a rabblerouser who loved life and stirring things up. Her and her little Buddhas. “That’s my cousin.” he said with a laugh. That’s my friend who saved me, I thought.