Even in bleak times, love’s light glows

It’s difficult writing about love in an era of horror. I realize that the internal mechanisms that fire our passions create longings for each other regardless of circumstances, but today’s overwhelming obsession with war and hatred is almost impossible to overcome.

Almost, but not quite.

Next to me on my desk is a sad and lovely little book called “Janet and Me,” a true story of caring so deep and compelling that one wants it to go on forever. Written and illustrated in “real cartooning” by Stan Mack, it’s about the 18 years he shared with Janet Bode, a writer, and the cancer that ultimately took her life.

Reduced to that, the story seems almost too simple to be so consuming, but love, by its very nature, is the sum of all emotions, from joy to despair, and they are contained in this book, which, by the depth of its feelings, brought me close to tears.

Love remained when all else seemed lost.

I read “Janet and Me” while my wife, Cinelli, was out of town, and, alone in the house, I found myself overcome by my need for her, thereby understanding Stan’s need for Janet. His longing in the sudden emptiness of the New York loft they had shared became my emptiness, albeit temporary, in the night room where I sat alone.

The illustrations, and they are masterful, are so real that one comes to know the couple in a dimension beyond words and even beyond any kind of stilted photographic form. Mack, whose real-life cartoons have appeared in the Village Voice and other publications, conveys images of a joyful, funny, spiky-haired Janet that bounce like Tigger off the pages of the book.

In a narrative that enriches the drawings, we meet a woman who can turn a day at the beach into an adventure, and a trip abroad into a visit to the moon. “Where’s the deodorant?” she demands in one panel, bursting excitedly into the room. Mack, who is packing, looks up and says, “You don’t use deodorant.” “But this is a big day,” she says, “we’re going to Spain!” Somehow, coming from this blithe and unpredictable spirit, it makes sense.

Much of the book, published by Simon & Schuster, is composed of their life together, and never is there a moment of doubt of their love for each other, even under duress. It continues through the emotional, financial and physical impact of her illness, often with laughter, during the journey they take together to the end.

In a panel that claws at the heart, Mack stands at a window looking out, a single tear drop on his cheek, thinking of Janet’s words: “Promise me you’ll always remember how I was before I had cancer.” This is a love story beyond white veils and promises, a reality that drew me into it with such force that I had to telephone my wife right then, right there, just to hear her voice.

“What’s the matter?” she asked. “Nothing,” I said. “I just wanted to say I love you.” “Have you been drinking?” “No. I’ve been reading.”

Cinelli is so like what Janet was. She loves music and good books and the high adventure of travel, of seeing something new. Playful, honest, creative and wise, she can prepare a gourmet dinner for a dozen guests on the same day she repairs a kitchen cabinet, writes a poem and plants half a dozen rosebushes. And she can straighten me out like no one else, neither parent nor editor, has ever been able to do. That, in itself, is a monstrous task.

Filled with Mack’s book and the similarities between Cinelli and Janet, I listened to the news later that same evening. The 1,000th military death in Iraq. Words of revenge and hatred in Russia following the murders of 335 innocents. And our vice president, Dick Cheney, spewing stupidity and hatred by implying that the election of John Kerry would precipitate a terrorist attack equivalent to the destruction of the twin towers. What kind of man rattles chains in the darkness when fear already stalks the land? A man without either wisdom or conscience.

Love dims in times of such horror and deception, struggling to be seen in the eerie half-light that illuminates battlefields and bad dreams.

I combine them here, love and grief, because I feel that in the long run, love is strong enough to survive even death, if planted in the hearts and memories of its survivors.

Stan Mack knew that, and so did Janet, whose strength is an element of the commitment lodged in the core of his book. Janet remained with him in dreams that seemed so real he could touch her.

And she remains with me, both as a reminder to treasure Cinelli and as a metaphor to describe how love endures even in the dark times of war and despair that too often shroud our lives.

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