Facing death is never easy. If you knew you were going to die tomorrow…what would you do differently? Losing a friend or family member makes us realize our own immorality. Read the full story below by Teresa McIntosh-Hall which describes friendship and loss.
Do you remember when you were about ten years old and your best friend passed you a note during 6th period study hall and upon reading it you nearly burst open inside trying to contain the laughter? If anyone else had read the note they would have replied “I don’t get it.” Truth be told…they weren’t meant to get it. Only the two of you “got it” and that is what made it special and funny. Well, Jean was that person to me. The only difference is our “study hall” was an office and we were ages 26 and 36 when we first met and developed an unbreakable bond.
About a year before my best friend Jean passed away she said, “Will you ever write about me?” I replied “I will…in due time.”
Jean died before I had a chance to say good-bye while an unfinished story expressing my love for her stared back at me from my computer desktop, simply titled; “They Will Fuck a Purse (and other useful things my best friend taught me).” Of course, this statement makes absolutely no sense to anyone else who reads it but if Jean were alive, she would surely fall on the floor laughing. She would understand.
I’ve always been attracted to interesting people…people who are quick, witty and smart as a whip. Jean was exactly that. With a Ph.D. from Notre Dame and a full-time job as a licensed psychologist her resume was proof that she excelled both academically and professionally. Yet Jean’s goal was never to spend more time at the office. She was smart enough to know that five o’clock means “get the hell home” (as she would often say). Never mind her hour commute from Dayton to Cincinnati…she rarely complained because waiting for her at home was a full life with her husband Pat and her five children, Trevor, Lad, Maggie, Jack and Molly. For years I listened to story after story about her kids and her husband. We bonded from our similar life experiences as working mothers. There were no secrets between us because any secrets we ever had were raised from the surface of our souls and put on the table to embrace together. It felt safe to say things to her like, “I have a yeast infection, three overdrafts and a two-day hang-over…can you buy me lunch?” We had long conversations where we pondered questions like “did we marry the right man?” For her, the answer was a simple “yes.” For me it was a complex and embarrassing “yes”, “no” and “yes.”
But as much as Jean and I were bonded together in sisterly harmony our differences existed. Looking back at pictures and yearbooks of our teenage and college years it was obvious to both of us that Jean was the brain and I was the Gump. She was the nun and I was the tramp. She was awkward and I was athletic. She dated no one. I dated everyone. She was raised by a single mother. I was raised in a two-parent household. She believed pot was harmless. I thought pot was a slippery slope to nowhere. We often argued over trivial stuff such as the legalization of marijuana and to spank or not to spank. We traded jabs about each other’s parenting styles…with me saying things like “let me get this straight…you think it is okay to smoke a fat doobie but you think it is wrong to spank your children? What fucking planet are you from?”
But of course, Jean and I agreed on more things than we disagreed on. We agreed that our co-worker Sarah was in dire need of a good psychiatrist, a bottle of Haldol, and a baby. Sarah once told another employee, who told another employee, who told Andrea, who told Vicki, who told Sally, who told Adele, who told Amy who told Jean who OBVIOUSLY and IMMEDIATELY told me (as this is what best friends do) that I seemed capable of drowning my children! My very appropriate response for her statement was a long string of curse words and the simple question….”what the Fuck?” It became a running joke with Jean and I that I shouldn’t be left alone near ponds, lakes or bathtubs while with the kids.
Sarah later went on to tell Jean that it angered her that she was unable to conceive a child but that “a woman like Teresa can.” A woman who leaves her MIT and Harvard educated husband, fucks a hot, blue eyed maintenance man on her desk (or so the rumor goes) and nine months later gives birth, as a single, unwed mother (on an Irish holiday of course).
Upon seeing my daughter Haley for the first time Sarah said to several employees “isn’t that the ugliest baby you have ever seen?” I cried waves of tears upon hearing of that comment but Jean assured me that my baby was amazingly beautiful. I still remember to this day exactly what Jean said; “Teresa, you just watch…because Sue spoke such a hurtful comment about your daughter, Haley will grow up to turn heads with her beauty because the law of karma will require it.” Jean’s prediction was amazingly accurate. It was as if God heard it and then delivered it. And for the record, I still haven’t drowned the children.
Jean and I worked together for seven years in Dayton but I eventually applied for a position in Columbus and received a promotion, but the workdays without Jean were painfully long. I missed our talks and our Chinese donut lunch breaks so I was adamant that she join me in my new bureau. It only took me a year to bring Jean on board. Her qualifications made it easy for me to find her a place within our unit.
She became home headquartered out of Cincinnati and so she was delighted that her long commute was a thing of the past and that she could do her work from her home and that we could meet in various cities across the state to do our jobs together. I admit though…I was worried. My fear was that because I would now be her manager that somehow our friendship would become damaged. Well I was wrong. Our friendship grew even stronger. It didn’t matter that Jean was smarter than me. It didn’t matter that Jean was known as “Dr. Herron” and I was simply, “Teresa.” She had my back and I had hers. Long work days were suddenly shorter and when we did have to travel for overnight trips on the job we made the best of it by eating at various Japanese Steakhouses and getting tipsy on free drinks in hotel bars. One evening I had the pleasure of dancing with Sam Walton at the Hyatt Regency, but Jean had to burst my bubble and explain to me that after six martinis all old men in suits look like Sam Walton. Of course, our overnight business trips were never complete without a midnight call to my ex-husband in Boston. It went something like this:
The Ex: Hello?
Jean: Hi, I am taking a survey. Do you have a foot fetish?
The Ex: Who is this?
Jean: Well, let’s move on….it says here your dick is only two inches long when fully erect. Fact or Fiction?
The Ex: Listen here whoever you are…..(Click!….this is where Jean hangs up the phone and I fall off the hotel bed laughing like a teenager)
Now I know you might be reading this and thinking “wow, how immature can you get?” And you are right. It was very immature but it was our way of letting loose, and not be the middle-aged women we were but instead just being girls laughing and cutting up together. Jean was easy to get silly and crazy with. She was a comedic genius. No one could make me laugh as much as Jean could. I cannot tell you how many times that tears would be falling down my cheeks from laughing so hard over something crazy that she said or did. My soul felt in sync with hers. As if we had known each other in another lifetime.
We freely gave and received advice from each other and no aspect of our personal life was off limits. “Trust me if he isn’t screwing you then he is screwing someone else” she would say. She could always make me laugh when she said; “Men will fuck a purse…they will fuck anything….it doesn’t have to be a coach…any purse will do.” This became an ongoing line for us. We would be in a staff meeting and she would discreetly point to a purse and then to a random male in the room. This is where I would look away and just start laughing.
I don’t expect anyone else to read the “men will fuck a purse” sentence and really understand just how funny and meaningful it was but when Jean said it and the way that she said it and the dialog that took place before she delivered her “advice” was comedic genius and medicine for my soul. Jean knew every secret I ever had and she loved me anyways. I knew hers and loved her just the same. We were two imperfect women who found, in each other, a perfect friendship.
I never had a sister so I don’t really know what sisterhood is like but you could say that Jean is the closest thing I’ve ever had to a sister. She was always looking out for me. During times of crisis and sorrow…she was there. She was loyal to a fault. On my birthday I could always count on her picking me up for lunch and taking me out to our favorite little dining joint where we sat in the back booth to talk and laugh and then she would pull out some unexpected surprise like a framed portrait of my children. She was an expert at knowing exactly what to get for me. She knew my likes and dislikes and even when she would travel with her sister out to Wisconsin in search of new furniture and decorations, she would call me and say “I just found the cutest painted picture that would be perfect for your back hallway. Do you want me to get it for you and you can pay me back later?” She was thoughtful like that. She would redecorate her house (her favorite hobby) and then give me all of her older decorations. One of my favorite gifts that she gave me was her Christmas plates with a different Santa Claus on each plate. She would come over to my home and paint a wall, clean a room, hang some curtains, whatever it is that she thought I needed help with…Jean was there. I never had to ask her….it was like she instinctively knew how to be the very best friend in the world.
Jean would bake her famous oatmeal cinnamon cookies during the winter months. It was our tradition to take the kids to the Great Wolf Lodge after the holidays and she would always bake those amazingly delicious cookies to take along with us. She enjoyed my reaction when I would bite into the first warm cookie of the season. She loved to say, “nobody appreciates a cookie as much as you do Teresa.”
Jean always feared she would die of cancer like her mother did. Her fears were statistically valid. Jean beat early stage breast cancer and she was declared “cured” but then ten years later she developed an aching back pain that just wouldn’t go away. She thought she pulled a muscle working in her yard. I remember many lunch dates with her where she would squirm in her seat and I would ask “what is wrong?” She would always reply casually and say “oh nothing, except my back is hurting again.” And then one day, as if she had a premonition, she said to me, “Teresa, what if I didn’t pull a muscle…what if this pain means I have a cancer again.” “Nonsense, but go back to the doctor to get an MRI to make sure.” I replied.
Life changed for the worst one cold day in January. The phone rang. It was Jean. “I got the test results back from the doctor. Are you sitting down?” she asked. She then told me that she had two weeks to live. Jean died four days later. She went from being a perfectly healthy woman with mild back pain to finding out she had an undetected, stealth like, incurable cancer that had spread to her liver and spine.
The last time I ever saw Jean she was resting in a hospital bed as I approached her with a batch of her freshly baked Oatmeal cinnamon cookies. She bit into the cookie but she was nearly too weak to chew. She smiled with pleasure because she knew it was the best way that I could tell her that I loved her. A couple of weeks after Jean passed away her husband called and said; “Jean left something for you that you need to pick up.” It was her cookie jar. It was her final and last gift to me.
Jean was absolutely fearless to the very end. As she was facing death she wasn’t worried about herself. Instead, she was worried about those she was leaving behind. Would her children be okay? Would her husband manage? Are the finances together? Even when dying, she was doing what she always did best…taking charge, wrapping things up, getting it done….so she could head home. She was a warrior. A fighter. The most beautiful woman you will ever meet. If the world only judged us based upon our hearts…Jean would take the prize. Other women would cower beside her. Her heart was pure. She radiated love.
God saw in me a need for a friend. He sent me Jean. I could never hold a candle to her but I warmed myself next to her flame for 18 years.
@copyright By Teresa McIntosh-Hall
Teresa McIntosh-Hall is a writer, blogger, social worker and political activist who misses her best friend Jean with all her heart and soul.
RESOURCES FOR HELP WITH LOSS AND GRIEF:
https://www.counseling.org/knowledge-center/mental-health-resources/grief-and-loss-resources