Good Bye Jane't

I was awakened yesterday by a phone call from a horse friend. She was calling for another friend, who had borrowed her trailer to haul her 3 horses to my farm. The call was to tell my that Jane't had died. Janet Smith-Bozarth, AKA Mistress Jane't Virago Parva of House Morningstar, had some kind of seizure about 5:00 Am. Her husband heard her moaning loudly, and went in to wake her from what he thought was a nightmare. She was lying face down on the floor, and he couldn't wake her. After calling 911, he started CPR. The paramedics arrived quickly, and took over, but she never rallied, and was pronounced dead at St Luke's Hospital. I don't know if an autopsy was done to determine what caused her sudden death. She was 6 months older than me, just 54.

Everyone is shocked and saddened by her death. She was so vibrant and lively. I had spoken to her just the night before, after she and James had been out to feed the livestock at the farm. When I saw her on Tuesday she was fine. She sometimes used a cane when her knee bothered her, but she wasn't using it that day. She was active in the SCA, and planned to merchant at an event this weekend, and next. It is hard to believe that someone that vital could be gone in an instant. What time bomb was lurking inside her body that went off in her sleep, and ended her existence? She was a cancer survivor, like me. Unlike me she had uterine cancer, not breast, but she had beaten it. She had survived a fractured skull from a horse accident, and a fractured knee from an automobile accident. She never had children of her own. Her horses and birds were her children, and the many youngsters in the SCA whom she helped.

There have been many messages on the SCA lists that I'm on about how she had touched this life, and that one. How she was one of the early women to fight heavy, and how she has been active in the equestrian community. She leaves a large hole, that will be hard to fill.

Good bye old friend. Sleep in peace, or if you would rather, ride the clouds with Girlie, and Molly, until we meet again.