The moments that make up a life, and friendship

Kristan Dael

50plus Magazine

Janice Dunlap says she was “her father’s only son.”

Oregon born and raised as one of triplet girls, she explains it was “not so much that I was a tomboy, but I wanted to find something that would separate me. Getting dirty was how I found my way.”

Attending beauty school at 17, Janice met Bonnie, a fellow student. “She was in boots, a ponytail and no makeup. She looked like a painting,” says Janice. “I’d never known a cowgirl, and I was enamored.”

Becoming fast friends, Bonnie invited Janice to her parents’ 200-acre Estacada farm. “I went Sundays and Mondays, learning how to muck hay, shoe, and care for the horses and cows — things my sisters wouldn’t do; things that could be mine. The friendship planted a seed that changed my life.”

Preparing to ride for the first time, Janice couldn’t carry her saddle. Bonnie told her: “If you’re going to ride you’ve got to carry your own tack, or you can’t come.” Later that very day, Janice enrolled in a gym.

On her next visit to the farm, Janice still couldn’t lift the saddle to her horse’s back, but says, “I dragged/carried that thing all the way. Bonnie said, ‘Looks like someone’s been eating her Wheaties!’”

The friendship grew. But a few month later, Bonnie told Janice, “I’ve gotta tell you something. You’re a very negative person — that’s why you don’t have any friends.”

Janice knew it was true. “I was always: ‘I can’t,’ ‘I never,’ ‘I won’t ever …’”

Bonnie continued, “You’re so down on yourself; it’s exhausting to be around.”

Janice was crushed. “I got my purse, walked out the door, and drove home. I was devastated. But that day changed my life.”

Remaining friends, they shared the excitement of their first dates, whom they both married. Then came first children: Janice and Ross’s son Colton and Bonnie and Mike’s daughter Sadie were exactly the same age.

Eventually Bonnie and Mike moved to Eastern Oregon, Janice and Ross to Washington. With busy lives and no cell phones at the time, they lost touch — for 20 years.

Janice and Ross welcomed three more children, Corinna, Grae and Tara. Their second-born, Corinna, contracted beta strep, a virus then affecting one-third of all women.
“At the time doctors weren’t required to test for it and many didn’t ask if a woman wanted to be tested,” Janice says.

When the test was ordered and proved positive, an antibiotic drip, administered throughout birth, could save the baby. Those who didn’t receive antibiotics rarely survived.

“I was in labor with Colton for 20 hours and he didn’t contract it,” says Janice.

“Cori did, and she lived only 21 hours.”

The loss led Janice’s doctor to work for eight years to pass a law requiring that every expectant mother be tested for the beta strep virus.

While words can’t convey the profound devastation of losing a child, Janice says she and Ross found peace in knowing their daughter’s job in this life simply took her 21 hours to complete. And, Janice says, “millions of babies’ lives were later saved because of Corinna.”

In her daily life, Janice’s long-ago introduction to fitness had stuck. She had begun running in 2007, eventually entering marathons. She also took up bodybuilding, eventually winning the 2008 Oregon title for bench press in her division. Her record still stands.

But her achievements felt meaningless, she says, when in 2013 she was diagnosed with triple-negative Stage 2 breast cancer. She told her doctor, “Look what good it did me.”

Her doctor replied, “You’ll realize when you go through therapy, it’s the grit and discipline of fitness that will get you through.”

At the time of her diagnosis Janice had been entered to run the Portland half-marathon. But her doctor said no, not while undergoing treatment.

“Apparently people don’t do this on chemo,” says Janice. “But I continued to work out, and about a month before the race my doctor gave the okay to run it! It was a defining moment for me.”

Throughout her recovery, Janice says, “I would write on the mirror in lipstick, tallying my chemo treatments and writing things like, ‘I can do hard things.’ I decided I was going to beat it, and once I did it wasn’t coming back.”

This year Janice celebrates eight years cancer free and was the first survivor to cross the finish line in the Portland Komen Race for the Cure for three consecutive years.

Shortly after her diagnosis, Janice says she kept hearing in her head, “Call Bonnie.” She didn’t act on it. Finally, while at the gym one day, she heard the voice demand: “You have to call Bonnie right now!” It sounded so real, Janice says, “I actually cried out, ‘OKAY!’”

Since they’d lost touch, Janice wasn’t sure how to find Bonnie. Then she remembered an old mutual friend and reached out through social media. The friend had
Bonnie’s number.

“But when I called, a different woman answered.” That woman, Heidi, told Janice that Bonnie couldn’t come to the phone.

“Something felt off,” says Janice. “I left a message for Bonnie to call.” The phone rang right away, but it was Heidi, asking Janice to explain who she was. “I did, and then said: ‘Look, I can tell something’s not right. Please tell me what it is.”

Heidi told her that Bonnie’s husband Mike had been killed the day before. Stunned, Janice asked her to have Bonnie call when she could.

Four days later, Bonnie called. “We both cried, and she asked me, ‘how did you know I needed you?’
I told her, ‘I don’t know.’ She said, ‘I need to see you.’ I said, ‘I know. We’re coming.’”

Janice’s family packed up and headed to Elgin. Janice says, “My hair was a half-inch long from treatment. The minute I saw Bonnie I knew I needed her as much as she needed me.”

During their stay, Bonnie, Janice and Janice’s daughter Tara went riding. “Tara was 11 and couldn’t
carry her saddle,” Janice recalls. “Bonnie told her, ‘You’re going to get to the point where you have to carry your tack.” Janice and Bonnie locked eyes. Bonnie slung an arm around her friend as they stood in quiet understanding — life coming full circle.

This was one of many of what Janice would come to call her “moments.” While seemingly insignificant, they were meaningful markers of Janice’s and Bonnie’s journeys and friendship — like pieces of malachite sparkling in the dusty fields of the land they loved.

“Over the years, every time I was at Bonnie’s I’d hear or see something I knew would be with me forever — one of my ‘moments.’ Maybe we’d be sitting drinking coffee, watching the sun rise or set, smelling the land, the animals, gazing at the golden glow, seeing the dirt motes kicked up.”

“One day at sunrise I grabbed my camera and we went for a walk. I asked Bonnie, ‘Can you believe this?’”

“What?”

“I said, ‘I’m still here with you, the sun’s coming up, and look at the beautiful silhouette of the horses. This is what I need.’”

“Bonnie told me, ‘I never had that. I never stopped for a moment and just took everything in.’”

Janice realized then that Bonnie had been missing that part of life. “She needed my ‘moments.’ And I needed her. She helped me be brave.”

Last January Bonnie had shoulder surgery. Janice’s husband Ross drove her through a snowstorm so she could help. During her stay, Janice ran the tractor, fed the animals, handled a chainsaw. Bonnie had long wanted to beautify her tack room, so they did that, too.

“As we were finishing up at the end of one night, I was doing last details,” Janice recalls. “Bonnie went out and came back with a bottle of whiskey and two glasses.

Raising her glass to mine she said, ‘This is my moment.’”

~Epilogue~

Interested in photography since high school — “any kind of art,” Janice says, “I love it all” —  her photography is yet another thread in the fabric of her journey of grit, love, and determination to change things that held her back.

Janice’s photography can be seen at janicejdunlap-photography.com and hanging in the new oncology wing of Providence Hospital in Portland. Her donated images were chosen for aesthetics. That she was (and still is) a patient makes them even more meaningful.

Today, Janice and Ross live in Gresham. They have four children — Colton, 29, works in Portland; Grae, 26, recently married; Tara, 18, attends the University of Hawaii.