Echoes - Jessie's eulogy.
This was originally posted to Myspace, and already a kind of a reposting then. The entry has a bit of context added, though, so I'm going to keep the extra layer.
Myspace Blog 11/18/2007
Notes
| Mar 12, 2011, 1:31 PM |  | ||
| ||||
Man, does it echo in here?
Current mood:
Along the way, I came across a digital copy of Jessie's eulogy. Oddly enough, it really hasn't made me sad to re-read it, and it's re-reminded me of a few portions of her life that I'd let myself forget. It's funny, because I'm actually re-reading "Eon", by Greg Bear, which, among other things, describes a form of meditation called Talsit. The description boils down to Talsit blocking your subconscious mind from accessing disturbing memories and smoothing over the gaps. You can still access the memories by conscious will, but they're not bouncing around in your head all day.
This seems to bear a lot of resemblance to the way my mind has handled Jessie's passing. Pretty much all of our life together, and even most of my conscious imagery of her, is no longer in focus, and in fact is impossible (or nearly so) to remember without a trigger of some sort. It's odd, and kind of distressing.
In any case, a copy of that eulogy follows; it's another slice of my life that I'd like to keep.
Extract - Jessie’s Eulogy
Current mood:
Some of you may not know exactly how Jessie passed, or may be receiving the information third hand. After Tuesday night's Narcotics Anonymous meeting, Jessie decided to go home with a friend and just talk for a bit about common experiences. She called me later that night to say that she'd be staying over, and so that we could exchange "I love you"s before going to sleep. Those were the last words that we said to one another, and I'm glad for that.
When I came by the next morning, neither I, nor Claire, could wake Jessie up. Since they'd stayed up until 6 the night before, we didn't take it as a warning sign, as we probably should have. Claire had classes that day, so we decided to just let Jess sleep it off, with me staying to check on her every once in a while. About 2 and a half hours later, she simply stopped breathing, and nothing I or the EMT team could do would bring her back.
We still don't know why Jessie died, and probably won't for several weeks. It seems likely that her body just stopped, from the damage that chemicals had done to it in the past. She may have died from an overdose, but all of the evidence we have so far seems to indicate that she died the way she would have wanted to: peacefully and clean.
Jessie's drug use was a complex thing. It originally started during difficulties in her prior marriage, and eventually led to their separation. She tried to hold herself together for her daughter, Paige, but soon realized that she couldn't give Paige the life she needed with these problems. Her ex-husband's parents, Harold and Tina, adopted Paige and allowed Jessie to remain a significant part of her life.
Jessie spent the next year or so bouncing around, leaving one bad situation after another, until she finally met a man named Barry, who became one of Jessie's best friends. He allowed Jessie to make the right decisions for herself, giving her a place to stay and never taking advantage of her, no matter what condition she was in. He helped her in many ways, but I think this was the most significant, because she left his apartment clean.
She stayed clean, too, for about a year and a half, until she found out that the lining of her uterus wasn't growing like it should, and was invading the surrounding organs. This was incredibly painful for her, and the doctors ended up putting her on a prescription of Vicodin, a narcotic pain-killer, for almost 5 months while we waited for the Navy to transfer us back to the states so that she could have a hysterectomy. Once we did get back, and the operation was preformed, she was primed to have a problem. She had a spate of medical problems over the next year that resulted in more painkillers. I don't know exactly when she started using again, but on January 16th of this year, she checked into the Hooper Detox Center in Portland to try and get herself clean again.
You wouldn't have believed how earnest she was about beating this thing. After she got out of the detox center, she seemed to bounce from one thing to another; from AA meetings to NA meetings to outpatient treatment centers, trying to get help in staying clean. She seemed so abruptly happy, and it was easy to see why. She wanted to be clean for herself and for our relationship, but most of all, she wanted to be clean so that she could have Paige in our lives again.
Jessie had two very special jobs while we were together. While we were in California last year, Jessie worked at the Home of Guiding Hands, which is a collection of group homes for the developmentally disabled. After being interviewed, they decided to assign her to the Cedar Springs house, because the people who reside there are in the less functional range, and need caretakers who will be able to make allowances for them without taking out their frustrations on the residents.
She really loved working there; woke up each morning raring to go, came home each evening exhausted, but happy. Even after a hair-pulling incident with one of the residents that landed her and a co-worker in the emergency room with missing hair and neck injuries, she still couldn't wait to go back. It was a paradox of sorts, because she was eager for me to get out of the Navy, but really didn't want to leave her "kids" when we moved on.
After we arrived in Oregon, Jessie looked for work with the disabled again, but ended up stumbling across a listing for a job with the Heartland Humane Society. She interviewed for the job and landed it immediately. She loved being there, even though it meant hard work and endless cleaning. On one of the harder days, she came close to moving a literal ton of cat sand, both used and unused. She cared a lot for the strays there, cleaned up the new ones no matter how dirty or grizzly they were. She was compassionate when someone had to go, always held them, quietly crying, until it was over. And of course, despite every protest, she did end up sneaking one home. She said she didn't have a choice, that Gracie was a special cat, and it was only until she could find a home. Gracie was her favorite at work; an ultra-friendly cat who only wanted to ride Jessie's shoulders as she cleaned.
For being someone who always claimed to be a dog person, she sure ended up with a lot of cats. I remember when we first decided to get a pet, when we were in Japan. We went to the local adoption center, and had decided on a beautiful black and white cat named "Wild Thing", who later became Theodore, because after we got home, this cat wasn't wild at all, just the shyest cat you ever met. In any case, as we were about to leave, this little black bobtailed kitten stuck his paw out of the cage and grabbed Jessie by the sweater, as if to say "Take me too!" Of course, we did.
That cat turned out to be a real terror, at first. Jessie called me at work one day in tears, and told me that she was about ready to murder him. Turns out that he'd spent the morning dashing around the house, knocking over everything and making a mess. When she finally caught him, he slashed up her arms and peed all over her. Thus, he became known as "the Piranha". He calmed down a lot later, and became her favorite. She used to call him her "nurse-cat", because he always seemed to know when she wasn't well, and would come and lay with her to make her feel better.
Jessie had a lot of energy, always seemed to be full of life and vibrant. She could make a person feel that she'd been a friend forever in a matter of minutes. She had a lot of talents, too, in addition to her compassion for others. She liked to draw and write and paint and just be creative in any way she could think of. At one point, she decided to try using Piranha's paws as paintbrushes. That didn't work out quite like she planned. Unfortunately, she was very self-critical as well, so I only have a few of her pieces left to remember her by. I guess that's really not important, because she changed my life in a million different ways and I couldn't forget her if I tried.
Jess and I had a very whirlwind romance. We met on the trolley in San Diego while I was assigned stateside for a naval school. She was sharing some snide Marine jokes with a Marine that was sitting across from her, and I just had to laugh. It turned out that we were getting off at the same stop, and she asked me to walk her on base. We ended up at the local country bar, waiting for one of her girlfriends to get off work. We talked all night, and found that we had a lot in common.
The next night, our second date, was spent mostly talking as well. We walked all over town, talking about anything and everything. We finally ended up down at the piers sitting on a bench, looking out at the water, and somehow we both moved towards each other to kiss for the first time. At that exact moment, about a hundred yards out on the water, a tour boat began letting off fireworks. It was just such an appropriate metaphor for how we were feeling. That memory has always been our most special, and this Sunday I am returning to that pier to release her ashes there in honor of the memory.
The rest of our dating days were short and equally wonderful. We knew that what we had was special, and weren't about to give it up. 19 days after I met her, on July 28th, 1998, Jessie and I were married at city hall in San Diego, and I have never once regretted that decision.
Comments
Post a Comment