Live Like Jancy

We lost a friend this week. It was sudden and shocking. In a word, it sucks. She was younger than me. Many of my friends are, that happens when you have kids later in life then make lots of friends through your kids. While I can’t stop thinking about Jancy’s sudden passing, my heart just breaks for her family. Nobody ever loved her family more than Jancy did. Nobody.

Once upon a time we saw each other a LOT, as in several times a week for 30+ weeks a year. We were baseball moms together for 6 years. Bob coached Jancy’s son Duncan. He and our son Brady played on the Roswell Green Hornet’s travel team together. We traveled to Cooperstown, Panama City, Myrtle Beach, Savannah and Lake Point, a lot and some other less notable places. Our team was different. It was all Roswell kids and we didn’t change players much from year to year, so the parents got close. Very close.

This photo below especially reminds me of Jancy. The North Fulton Community Charities announced one summer that their food pantry was running low. Jancy got with Coach Bob and Duncan who rallied the boys to go door to door in their neighborhoods and collect food. That was Jancy. She was always doing nice things for others.

The Hornet moms froze under the same blankets in the early spring and shared sweaty hugs when we won tournaments in the brutal sun of the southern summers. We won a lot of tournaments. We sobbed at our last tournament in Myrtle Beach when we knew the team had played its last together. We were still friends after the boys finished 14u and went their separate ways but I didn’t see her as often as I’d like. I regret that so much now. I also regret that there is nothing that I can do to fix that except be a better friend going forward to the rest of the Hornito moms and all my other friends.

But back to Jancy. I’ve been thinking about her, nearly nonstop, since we first heard the news this weekend that she’d passed after complications from brain surgery. Jancy’s passing has rocked our town of Roswell, GA. It’s made our city of 100,000 seem like a small town. You can play 7 degrees of separation with Jancy, but you only need to go 2 or 3 degrees because it seems that everyone is only 1 or two levels away from knowing Jancy personally, from being affected by the loss; from church, her neighborhood, small group, Sunday school, the beloved elementary school where she taught, the schools her children attended, sports teams…… you get the picture. Everyone is shocked and hurting for their own loss and especially for her family.

I don’t know if Jancy had a written personal mission statement or set of values, but looking at how she lived her life she definitely lived a set of core values. I personally think she lived by the 4 “F”s, Faith, Family, Friends and Fun. I could see those in every interaction. It is how I will remember her and how I will cherish her legacy.

Jancy loved her family with a love and loyalty that was deep and true. I have never heard Jancy utter a negative word about her sweetheart Phil. Ever. She would tease him in that southern accent that made Phil a two syllable word but it was always, always loving, always kind. She adored him and respected him. She was a smart partner to him. She was supportive and adoring in a non-cartoonish way. I wish I were more like Jancy in that way. I know Bob, my husband, probably does too. I’ll work on it, for Jancy.

Jancy’s faith, her relationship with her God, the Methodist Church, her small group, her Sunday school class, those meant the world to her. She was a good Christian woman and she was raising her children in the same manner that her mama and daddy raised her. She and Phil both were. Jancy was someone that modeled Jesus’s love on earth. She loved the least among us and reached out to help other whenever she could. We could all stand to be more like Jancy in that way.

Jancy was a mama bear who LOVED her daughter Katie and her son Duncan with a white hot passion. When they were disappointed with an unfair outcome in their life, I can only think of two because they excel at everything, Jancy was furious (as were her fellow Roswell Hornet Baseball moms). All the while, she would work through the life lessons that they needed to learn – that the outcome ultimately works for good. I know that our village will surround Katie and Duncan to ensure that they feel Jancy’s love from here on out but it can never be replaced. Jancy was irreplaceable.

Jancy was so much fun. I have only to close my eyes to hear that laugh. Oh that sweet southern laugh. I do not know how someone laughs with a southern accent but Jancy did. She could giggle and guffaw and snort with the best of them. She loved a good time and never missed the opportunity to celebrate a birthday or a special event. She loved and prioritized her friends. She was a southern lady who was raised right. She never went anywhere without a hostess gift. I’m sure her socks were monogramed. She was the kind of lady who would write a thank you note for a thank you note. That kind of southern lady. She was lovely, kind and while it is said so often that it has become a cliche’, Jancy epitomizes what it means to be beautiful inside and out.

Jancy was also a kindergarten teacher at the world’s best elementary school, Roswell North Elementary (RNE). The only favor Jancy ever asked me was when she applied to work at RNE. She asked me if I could recommend her to the then principal, Kindra Smith. I would have done it without her asking and she would have been hired without anyone’s recommendation based on her energy, her aura, her skills and her charm. She leaves behind a classroom full of children, actually grade levels full of children whom she has taught, who have to learn too early that the world isn’t always fair but our village is rallying around them, too, at the world’s best school.

Jancy exuded love and life wherever she went. The world is worse off without her in it. I am going to try to be a better friend, a better person, and not let so much time pass without seeing my friends, in her honor. I’m going to try to live and love more like Jancy. I’m also going to miss the heck out of her.