For Aunt Jane, on the day of my Birthday:

Today is my birthday, and I would like to remember my aunt Jane, who passed away this past week.
Aunt Jane is, in fact, my great aunt. She is my grandma’s (gram) older sister. Ever since I could remember, Aunt Jane always seemed old. She lived in an older house, a little run down out by rivers edge athletic center. She spent years smoking, so the house always had that particular smell stick to the walls and carpet. You used to find all sorts of things around the house. I remember when she once gave my older sister a whole collection of porcelain nuns, wearing blue or black veils, kneeling in prayer or standing with hands folded. I used to go over there to help clean around the house, cut plants in the back or just visit with my mom. I didn’t always necessarily want to go work there or visit there. I had other things to do in my busy young life, like running through the forest with John and James or playing GI Joes or gathering around John’s Sega Genesis. Her son Don, who lived in the house, helping maintain it and support his mother, would always be our foreman. It was difficult in my youth at times to go over there, but I would because I knew that Aunt Jane loved us.

Throughout the years, on this very day, a phone would ring in our house and my mother would pick it up. “It’s for you,” she would say, and I, quite surprised, would take it. Then in an old, somewhat rough voice, I would hear Aunt Jane singing Happy Birthday to me. I can still recall her graveled voice coming across a staticky phone celebrating my birth. Aunt Jane really loved us.

Aunt Jane had been getting older and older these past few years. At times, being young and inexperienced, it was somewhat difficult to face this aged woman. Seeing her, you were seeing age, weakness and infirmity. You were confronting mortality. She had trouble walking and trouble seeing. You had to speak directly into her ear, and sit as she mumbled to you. She carried her age in her body. Love, however, helped me to overcome these difficulties, and pushed me to go forward and embrace the woman with a hug who had welcomed in so many birthdays for me.

She moved out of her house and into hospice care, and we never really knew how much longer she would last. Out of difficulty traveling, she stopped making appearances at our family events and I have a hard time remembering the last time I saw her.

This last week aunt Jane slipped into a coma and passed away.

On this day of all days, the death of aunt Jane has hit me. I look back with sad disappointment that I wasn’t around to be with her during these past few years. I wish I could say that it was distance of college, the busyness of jobs, or the travels to foreign lands that made it difficult to see here, but that would only be lying to myself. I became simply occupied. Aunt Jane, thus, remained largely outside of my life. Now, having become comfortably close with suffering, illness and death, as I have visited AIDS and TB patients at Mother Theresa’s health clinic and cared for their wounds, I would hope that I wouldn’t hold the same indifference at home. I would hope that I could find it in me to visit and be present with someone even in the face of illness and death.

Now Aunt Jane has passed on, without a whisper of goodbye, and today, I remember her, for so many years of calling on this day to sing to me Happy Birthday. I can’t attend her funeral, and I haven’t received such a call for years, but my memory of her, and the way that she blessed my life with those small moments of celebrating with me will always stick with me and be remembered on this day.


March 26, 2007

Jane Marie Riordan Daron passed away during the night, having slipped into a coma last Thursday. Jane was living in a care facility in Tigard, Oregon.

Jane Marie Riordan Daron (Stephen, Stephen, James) b April 1921, d March 26, 2007, was born in Baker City, OR to Stephen Joseph Riordan II and Grace Mary Conlan. Jane married Donald Ray Daron in Baker City on May 24, 1940. They divorced in 1965. Jane resided in Baker City, Portland, Gresham, Lake Oswego and Tigard, OR.

Jane is survived by her sons Stephan Ray Daron, Donald James Daron and Clifford Michael Daron, 2 granddaughters, 4 great grandchildren and her sister Margaret Riordan Schreiber.

Funeral arrangements are Apr 14, 2007