LIVING ON

These are the concluding words of A Way to Die, the book that Rosemary and Victor Zorza wrote about their daughter Jane, who died from cancer when she was twenty-five:

When we went back to Washington at the end of the summer, we became aware of a change in ourselves. We were thinking far more than ever before about what really matters in life, about feelings, about the more abiding human values, about people – people as individuals. Jane talked of all these matters in her last weeks, and she made them more real to us than they had been. She also took pleasure in passing on her more cherished possessions to her friends. She gave a lot of thought to it. She liked to see them walk away with something she had given them, after they had said goodbye.

"I don't need a 'thing' to remember Jane by," said one of her friends. "Jane taught me how to make bread. Whenever I make bread, I think of her."

Before she died, we had talked of how people live on in what they do, in their actions, in the memories of those they have influenced. That was how Jane hoped she would live on. And she will.


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