In Memory of Janalee

The first adoptee I ever met was in 3rd grade. Her name was Janalee, and she was a feisty red-head who would deck you if you looked at her twice. She was one tough cookie. Her aparents were the first people in our middle-class neighborhood to buy a color television set. They invited all the neighborhood kids over to watch "The Wonderful World of Disney" on Sunday evenings. They were nice...but distant. They were so much older than than the rest of our parents....their ages just seemed to stand out to me as a young child. I went through grade school with Janalee...and then junior high. When it came time for high school, I attended a different one than my friends and neighbors. The late 1960's were hitting my friends and myself like a freight train...everything was shaken to its core. Many of us went into the war protest movement, much to our parents' dismay and disapproval. Many of us started experimenting with psychedelics in Southern California...many of us were searching for some meaning in life...we couldn't accept what our parents had settled for in the 1950's. Life became pretty much crazy... When we were in 10th grade, our sophomore year in high school, Janalee and I went our separate ways...although we often saw each other at parties, we rarely confided in each other anymore. But I knew through the grapevine that Janalee was going through a lot of adoptee issues....she was trying to figure out who the heck she was. I was very involved in my school's drama department, and often spent Friday and Saturday nights on stage crew...if I wasn't in the play. One Saturday night, I was invited to this neighborhood party...and I had the weirdest feeling come over me...I didn't want to go. My drama teacher called me at home and asked me if I could fill in for the stage-crew director that night, and I readily agreed to come in. That night Janalee died...at the party I was invited to. She took an overdose of Seconal...her death certificate says "accidental overdose", but it was anything but accidental. That girl took a bottle of "reds" and laid down on the living-room couch to die....and everyone just looked the other way. Her body was dumped on the steps of Clairemont Hospital...because everyone was scared to death they'd be prosecuted for some crime. Janalee was 15 years old.... Janalee's funeral was the first of many funerals I've attended over the years. Sometimes, she haunts me in my dreams. I see her tenacity and her smile when we were 8 years old. I also see how the silence about her adoption killed her when we were 15. Janalee was the strongest-willed kid I ever met...but she died at her own hand. I don't have a clue why I'm writing about her this morning. I guess I think she has the right to have her story told. And I sometimes wonder if her birth mother knows that she died a long time ago...or does she think she's still alive and just not searching for her. The silence is what killed Janalee...I know this to the depth of my soul.