To me, Jane Dell was one of the “realest” people I have ever known. She was wonderfully and unapologetically just herself. That meant that you had to take whatever was on offer in any particular exchange, and Jane never left you in any doubt as to what that was on a given day. My engagements with Jane were threefold: social, sacramental and, of course, email. Never backwards about coming forwards, Jane never left you wondering what she meant or what she wanted. She also never left me in any doubt that what she wanted above all was to win her own room in the Father’s house, preferably along with her beloved Roy. As everyone who knew her knows well, she missed Roy terribly. She may well have had many friends, friends of a lifetime, but there was no-one who could compare with Roy apart, perhaps, from the Lord Himself.

Her love for the Lord was, I think, very deep. I cannot obviously speak here about my one-to-one sacramental encounters with Jane, but I can share with you a few anecdotes to prove her love for Christ. I once asked Jane why she moved about the church so much in terms of her seat. The answer came: so that I can hear you speak about the Lord. When the lockdown was on the cards at the beginning of covid and I was floundering about trying to get the livestream up and running, Jane was persistently on my case to complain about the picture being too shimmery, or the sound being too muffled, or the camera angle being too awkward. After a number of such emails, I explained, and not in my best manners, that much of it was simply due to the quality of wifi we had. She was silent for a while and then I noticed in the parish bank statements that a further, not insignificant, monthly faster payment was being made by Jane, with the one-word description for it, “wifi.” For Christmas, Jane, probably fibbing, told me that she had won some money on the “pools”; she would hand me half a dozen envelopes containing a beautiful Christmas card and fifty pounds each for me to give to anyone I knew who was in need. I also caught her on one occasion putting a fistful of notes into the collection box at the crib: she just remarked, “well, it’s no use sitting in my purse.” And then there were the matronly emails recommending that I find a bolt-hole and disappear for ten days at a time with reprimanding remarks that I should remember I wasn’t getting any younger!

In that reading from Apocalypse, we hear that the good deeds of those who die in the Lord go with them. If I, as one man, can recount so many good deeds done by Jane that I know of, I get the impression that they are multiplied manifold times over in relation to countless people, known and unknown to her, over the span of her 77 years. Not to forget the cats, the birds and the moths! And that she died in the Lord seems beyond question because she longed for and ardently desired His friendship more than any other.

Jane was gifted in being able to make good friends, but she worked hard, too, at keeping them, at reaching out, at remembering their diary dates and their issues and problems. Her sincerity and genuineness meant that you would not doubt her word or her motives. She was not a people-pleaser; she did not cultivate human respect or the superficial platitudes that so often go with that. She had no fear of being disliked because that would have meant that she would not be the real person she was. In that, she was a kindred spirit with the Lord. She will probably have turned up at the pearly gates without any airs or graces or illusions about herself or anyone else. And I wouldn’t put it past her to give the Lord a telling off for a few things that made her none too pleased in this life!

Whether Jane is in purgatory for a shorter or longer period at the Lord’s loving behest, I don’t doubt that from there and, in God’s good time, from heaven itself, she will continue to perform many good deeds of love for those she has left behind, including for her sister Mary, all the family and, yes, for the good friends she made outside and inside this parish of St. Mary’s, which she most definitely loved to bits.

If we suffer wifi problems during the livestream, I will be on her case without delay. While I will miss her emails and pointed observations, I will depend on her prayers as before.

As is evident from the family eulogy, and from what we all came know about Jane’s life, especially her last days and sudden departure, she had her allotted share of suffering in this life. But Jane perceived in her own intuitive fashion that all of it found its meaning and purpose in the Cross of her Saviour. You don’t come to daily Mass, frequent confession and pursue a deep relationship with God unless you have understood that. Nor do you believe for a second in your deepest heart and soul that the Cross exists as an end in itself. You trust in the Cross because you trust in the One who hung upon it out of infinite love for you; and you trust in Him because He alone can take you through the Cross to the Father’s house, and indeed, to share the Father’s throne. The Cross is the Way to the Truth and the Truth is the Way to Life, real Life, eternal Life.

It is simply absurd to think that someone as real as Jane Dell has dissolved into unreality. Because of Christ, it is in fact death itself which will dissolve into unreality, not those who have lived, loved and suffered longing for Him. And so, dear Jane, we love you and leave you to rest awhile in the sleeping arms of eternity until, with all the just, the Lord whom you loved so well in this life raises you in the flesh to sing the new song of the blessed in the Kingdom of eternal light.