When I’m writing a book, I often lie awake at night, thinking about the next scene or mentally rewriting the last one.  Yesterday I finished the first draft of The Taken Ones. Did I sleep like a baby last night?  No, I stayed awake thinking about this week’s blog.

Just before Thanksgiving, I learned that my publisher had decided to move the pub date for the next Ali book to 2027, leaving me without a book for 2026.  At that point my other publisher said, “If you can finish the next Beau book by the end of January, we can publish it in September, 2026.”  

Guess what? It’s written, but believe me, that’s only because I’ve had my nose to the grindstone.  In fact, the only time I’ve left the house in January was to attend a performance of Nine to Five in Issaquah with my daughter. There’s been no time for mani-pedis, so  I’m typing this with a broken nail on one hand and a naked one on the other. Thankfully, someone else does our grocery shopping.  

But being housebound for the past month has cut back on subject matter for blogging, because my contact with the outside world has been limited to what shows up in my email.

Earlier last year, my older sister, Jay Lane, passed away suddenly.  On Sunday night she was participating in a family group-grope email session in her customarily witty way.  On Monday morning she was found lying in her downtown Seattle condo having suffered a stroke. When surgery failed to remove the clot, she was hospitalized on hospice care. According to her medical directive she wanted no extraordinary measures, no visitors, and NO FLOWERS!  Did I mention that she was somewhat opinionated?  To his credit, her son, Dale, abided by all her wishes, and by the following Saturday she was gone.

By the way, shortly after Jay’s passing, Bill and I updated our wills and medical directives.  Some of my readers might consider doing likewise.

Of the seven Busk kids and despite the four year age gap, Jay and I were always close and remained so into adulthood.  While my first husband and I were working on the reservation and our three dogs perished in a roll-over accident, she was the one who cared enough to show up while I was grieving.  When her dog, Smoky Joe, needed to be transported from Phoenix to Eugene, I was the one who handled that.

In the late sixties, we left our husbands at home and teamed up for a Europe on Five Dollars a Day trip to the UK where we did our traveling on a Brit Rail pass and hoofed it the rest of the time. On a Sunday afternoon we hiked a more than nine-mile pilgrimage back and forth between Salisbury to Stonehenge. In London we saw a stage production of The Mousetrap along with a wonderful farce called No Sex, Please,We’re British. The play may have bombed in New York, but we thought it was hilarious. 

While we were kids, Jay was known as either Jeannie or Jeannette Beth, if she happened to be in trouble with our mother—which happened on numerous occasions. She dropped out of high school after her sophomore year, married, and had both her sons before she turned seventeen.  Headstrong?  I’ll say, but also whip smart. She never attended college and she may have obtained her high school diploma via a correspondence school, but she was a lifelong member of Mensa. (I never had the nerve to apply for Mensa. I didn’t think I was smart enough to qualify!) As for Trivial Pursuit?  I finally quit playing that with her because I always lost.  She knew ALL the answers.

When she landed a job as a service rep for Ma Bell in Eugene, Oregon, in the early seventies, she ended up in an office with a minimum of five co-workers with names that were all variations on a theme of Jeannie—Jeannie, Jeanette, Jean, etc.  That’s when she pared her own name down to Jay and stayed that way from then on.

In 1974 when my son was born and I came close to dying in childbirth, she’s the one who came to our rescue, taking care of me, my son, and my fourteen month-old daughter.  In the early eighties, as a refugee from a bad marriage and a worse divorce, where did I go looking for help?  To Jay, of course.  The kids and I came to Seattle and lived her Jay in downtown Seattle condos.

I was still selling life insurance during the week when I started writing, on weekdays working in the early morning hours before the kids went to school.  On weekends, when I was whaling away on my dual-floppy Eagle, Jay took the kids to one bargain matinee after another.

The Sunday before last, during a family email session, we went down one of Jay’s favorite rabbit holes by coming up with as many homonyms as we could think of:  need/kneed/knead; bite/byte; sink/sync.  At some point in the process somebody pointed out that this was a wonderful way to remember Jay, and it was.

This morning my brother, Gary sent me a much more comprehensive list. I was going to add it to this blog, but it’s way too long.  If you’re interested in seeing it, send me a note at jajance@me.com, requesting a copy of the Jay Lane Memorial Homonym List.

This week too, I heard from one of Jay’s friends from back in the 80’s.  This was someone I had never met, but she had only recently learned of Jay’s passing and she sent along this photo. That’s how my sister looked when we were living together in the Denny Regrade. (By the way, does anyone still call it that or is it strictly Belltown now?)

If your version of the blog doesn’t include the photo and you want to see it, you can request a copy of that, too.  Same address, jajance@me.com

I believe it’s safe to say that Jay was as smart as she was bright, and she always gnu when she was write!

And the beet goes on!