Remembering Empire resident Jan Sikorski

Photo: Jan Sikorski passed away early on May 29 after a battle with cancer.

By Mary Sharry
Sun contributor

I didn’t know Jan Sikorski as well as many others in the village of Empire did, but what I did know of Jan is that she was ever the optimist, full of positive thinking.

The Unity faith was our connection. Growing up in the Detroit area, we had both attended the Unity Temple in Detroit. Jan, too, was acquainted with the spiritual thinker and minister, Eric Butterworth, and so during the last visit I had with Jan, a month or two before her passing, we discussed Unity Village, the headquarters for the Unity School of Christianity in Lee’s Summit, Missouri which Jan had visited on more than one occasion. I told her I had never been there, so she laughed and suggested we take a road trip. Even toward the end of her illness, the cancer, she remained an optimist. I could say that Jan has made the great road trip now, but in Unity, when a body dies, we say that person made their transition, and so has Jan.

Life is a circle it seems, and in the two days before her passing my companion, Bill, and I watched a doe in Jan’s backyard. How fitting it seems that on the morning when we heard that Jan had passed away, as we walked past her backyard, there we observed a new fawn, lovely to see, its little ears poked up through the tall grasses where its mother knew it would be safe.

In its many forms life does seem a continuum. The form of Jan is no longer with us, but the memory of her determination, her wisdom and trust that good prevails will stay alive.