Jan Woodyard
This is a poem about my friend Jan Woodyard.
She has been dead for two years.
Now I need to write about her.
Jan lived across Calera Creek from me.
She worked as a Realtor.
Kathy and I first met her when we thought we would move.
She took us to see homes in San Bruno.
My daughter, about 3, sat in the car seat.
Jan, who always smoked, had a deep, ragged cough.
After one of Jan's coughing fits, my daughter began coughing,
imitating her. My wife was embarrassed. I was oblivious.
Jan didn't mind. She had an affection for children.
One of hers had died, she told us once, calling her a "blue baby,"
in reference to the manner of death. The child turned blue
because she suffocated in the womb before she was born.
"She would have lived had she been born today,"
Jan would say to us whenever she mentioned her daughter.
When we decided to remodel rather than move,
Jan thought that was a good decision. She cared more about us
than about her commission. She didn't know
that it would take twice the time and money
than we planned on spending after we hired a crooked contractor.
During this time, she would call us to warn us about our builder.
When we asked about her health, she would mention her emphysema.
Shortly after we moved back in, Jan called me, on my birthday,
to welcome my wife and me back to the neighborhood.
The next day she died. My wife suspected that the emphysema
tortured her so much, each breath quick static pins,
and never enough, that she chose death instead.
That week, we read in the Tribune that she had worked for the CIA
as a secretary many years earlier. She resigned when her fiancee,
a CIA agent, was killed "in the field," as the paper noted.
We never knew this secret about her.
All we knew was her love for us and her quiet strength
amidst pain and loss and that she called us to tell us goodbye.
Now, I hope, she takes deep breaths of air from the source. And is healed.
by Paul Totah
8/18/97