Just last weekend Dave Amante and I were reminiscing about the last 20 years of work. The people, the patients, the changes… and you Jennifer were among the people we talked about missing. Wherever you are, I hope you’re happy, healthy, and shining down on us!

In 2004 my son was born at 24 weeks at Brigham and Women's. I didn't meet Jay during the 114 days we were in the NICU. Instead, I met Amy and Jay as part of an online mom's group. When my son came home, we were told to keep him home and away from people and germs for two years. Therapists and nurses came to our house to provided services, but for the most part, it was just the two of us at home all the time. I started taking photos and using Flickr to post and write about my life, looking for any kind of connection. I responded to a photo on the site when I saw the person who posted it lived in the Boston area as well. We communicated on Flickr for a while and then she extended an invitation to an online forum for moms, an irreverent, hilarious, sometimes snarky, and honest place to talk about whatever we needed to talk about. This is how I connected with Amy and Jay. Many of us lived in New England, so we would arrange meetups so the kids could hang out and we could shoot the shit and feel less lonely and isolated as mothers of young kids. I have anxiety, and part of my anxiety is social anxiety. I would always feel weird and out of place and I don't know what to say and I am going to hide over here and hope notices me at these meetups. Amy and Jay saw past this and invited me into the fold, made me feel comfortable, didn't give up on me when I was super awkward and weird. They invited us to events like the Lantern Walk at Jamacia Pond, and after they moved, we were always welcomed into their home. Mama Jay, as my kid called her, introduced us to the chickens, played baseball, drove the kids around on farm equipment, and let them sit on motorcycles with promises of rides later. Knowing Jay as a friend meant good-natured ribbing and snark when it was warranted, but watching her as a mother was pure love and joy. When I had to have a significant surgery at the Brigham, Jay came to the recovery room to check on me even though I wasn't on her patient roster. When I was drugged and freaked out that I couldn't feel my arm, which I just said repeatedly and nothing else, she helped me through it with a kindness I have not experienced since. She was a beautiful blend of humor, call you on your bullshit, and gentle strength. I really wish I was a better writer and storyteller because my words do not do her justice. Amy, Lil, and Theo, we are sending you our love from way down here in Georgia. 

I will never forget the day that I bumped into Jay Martell in the hallway at Brigham and Women’s hospital in 2014. I was there with my mother, who was a patient. This was an urgent return visit after being sent home to recover from abdominal surgery. She was having some post-op issues and her at-home visiting nurse was concerned enough to send her back in, so my mother, 79 at the time, was understandably distressed about her situation.

There I was, the youngest child, in the position of taking care of my mom. This was the beginning of a shift in our relationship that would continue and culminate in me running a home hospice for her 4 years later when the cancer re-emerged as the deadly pancreatic variety. But at this moment, I had just moved the whole family up to MA from RI in part so I could take on this role. But I didn’t really know how to do it yet. I was thrown into this post-op emergency situation and was just making it up as I went along. Nerve-racking, to say the least. At some point I left my mother’s hospital room and was walking the hallways. Maybe to find her some water or some ice or whatever. Walking down the hall, who do I run into but Jay Martell. My friend, my mom-friend, the slightly-older-so-she-seems-like-she-knows-way-more-than-I-do friend.

I had become friends with Jay through an online new-mom’s group that existed in the days of MySpace. Social media wasn’t really a thing yet. It was just starting to climb out of the primordial cyber-goo and become the malignant corpuscular thing that it is today. PSV was just a private forum, where we all spent way too much time poring over the details of one another’s babies, marriages, diets, wardrobe, home decor, you name it.

Lilja and Theo, I am certain that you do not have any memory of the PSV era, but as result of it there is a group of moms out there that consider you partly their own. We endlessly shared our revelations of motherhood with one another, to the point that all the PSV babies feel, to me anyway, like mine somehow. We try not to be creepy and stalkery about it. But there it is. The 2 of you were the lucky lucky babies who had 2 moms, so you had both parents in the forum discussing the minutiae of your infancies. Lilja, the group was born after your birth, and it was your babyhood that brought Amy and Jay into this circle. And Theo, we were all holding Amy in our hearts collectively as you were born, and in so doing felt like you were ours.

This group did not limit itself to online interactions. Many in person playdates were arranged, and this is how I came to know the impossibly tall yet elfin Jay Martell. Statuesque, strong, blond, and that nose… a Scandinavian goddess, the fierce mother, maker of birthday cakes and halloween costumes, the hardworking nurse, the bad-ass biker, the sharp tongued snark-master. Visiting the house in Plympton many times I recall her busying herself with: eggs, chickens, tractors, motorcycles, climbing structures, blueberries growing inside a screen house to keep out the birds. Jay put so much energy and inventiveness into creating an exceptional environment for Lilja and Theo to grow up in.

But in the hallway at Brigham and Women’s hospital in 2014 I was introduced to Jay the caregiver. Jay the health whisperer. When we saw each other, and I told her why we were there, we chatted and caught up, and then she (most likely after talking with the nurse assigned to our room) came in and spent a long time talking and listening with us, answering all of mom’s questions, and mine. It was so epically comforting to have Jay there with my mother and I in that moment. And to see what her patients saw: competence, compassion, patience, generosity of spirit. To my surprise, the 2 of them got along like gangbusters. My mother and Jay were actually quite similar. Neither had any patience for foolishness of any kind. Neither had any interest in beating around the bush about difficult subject matter. My mother just wanted to know what the hell was going on, and Jay was able to give her that information in a frank and straightforward way that she could understand and take some comfort in. Comfort because, for my mother, not knowing was scarier than knowing, even when the truth sucked and was hard. Jay understood this. She also clearly understood how to read a person and know how much information that individual needed, how much reality they could handle.

It was interesting, and a little off-putting, to see those 2 women, so different in so many ways and yet also so alike, connecting like that. Mom was immediately fond of Jay as she appreciated her directness and her sharp wit. Jay helped mom to understand her new reality, and she helped me to understand my new role as mom's caregiver. My mom went on to beat that first tumor, and have another 4 years of vibrant good health that were somewhat miraculous. During those 4 years, Jay herself was diagnosed with a different type of cancer, and as that struggle progressed, it was easy to draw comparisons between both of their journeys. As my mother’s disease recurred and she eventually died in 2018, I hoped and prayed that their narratives would diverge. It was difficult to lose my mother, but she was 83 at that point, with adult children and grandchildren, so her death did not hold the element of tragedy that Jay’s does. Jay’s death is tragic, and unfair. Amy, Lilja and Theo, I am so sorry that her life was so much shorter that we had all hoped. I am so sorry that she was taken from you. She was a fantastic, exceptional person, and I feel lucky to have known her, even as briefly as I did. Hold her in your hearts forever.

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As a footnote, I want to relay 2 spooky events surrounding Jay’s death. As Jay was moved to hospice I started burning a candle for her in my home every night. It served as a kind of reminder to me to hold her, and you, in my heart as her life wound down. The day that Jay died, the candle also died. It just ran out of wax and that was the end.

On the day of Jay’s interment, thinking about the importance of ritual, and how much we miss it and need it in these isolated pandemic days, I woke up and got dressed for the event. I even wore jewelry! I was there with you, although obviously much warmer, and you all had me sobbing at my kitchen table. (Special thanks to Christopher for sharing so much of your family’s history, what a fantastic insight into Jay’s life and the extraordinary way that she and Amy and you built it) Through my tears, as you all were sharing the task of covering her remains with a blanket of earth, in the background I could see 2 tall memorials with the name “Hersey”. It’s hard to tell how close they are to Jay’s plot, but they are close enough that I could read them. My mother’s maiden name was Hersey, and she is descended from William Hersey who landed in Hingham when he arrived from England around 1650. So those would be the memorials stones for her cousins. My mother was very proud of her Hersey roots, and would be thrilled to see her now friend Jay resting among that family.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKDJv_d6tD8