A Death & A Deliverance
The first time I met Jinny, I couldn’t stand her. She was the gushy, chatty girlfriend of my son, Julian, and she walked around radiating almost unbearable positive energy despite the fact that, at 32 years old, she was terminally ill. It was almost too late before I began to see her in a different light.
A SEVEN-PART SERIES, BASED ON A TRUE STORY
Originally published November 2022 on nicolejeffords.com
Part I: A Death & A Deliverance
Jinny, Wise Hero - Nicole Jeffords | Graphite on Paper (2021)
Things had been falling apart. Unraveling. My sweet daughter-in-law, a beautiful brown-skinned girl named Jinny, had been released from the hospital, sent home for hospice. She wasn’t my daughter-in-law exactly. There’d been no exchange of vows before a judge. She was my son’s beloved.
The first time I met Jinny, I couldn’t stand her.
My son, Julian, had barely talked to us about her. “I met this girl …” he said, but no description, and I wasn’t that curious because back then Julian, who’d already been married and divorced, had lots of girls. All he said about Jinny was that he’d first made her acquaintance at Nordstrom where they’d both once worked. And that she had breast cancer.
That gave me pause. Jinny was only 32. How did someone that young get cancer? The whole story was unreal to me until I finally met Jinny. And afterwards, it was still unreal.
We met in a parking lot outside a sushi restaurant on Burnet Road in Austin. It was October, 2019, three months before the official onset of COVID. No one had any inkling of the fast-spreading disease that was about to assault us. As far as we were concerned, it was just a cool, dark evening and we were there to meet our son’s girlfriend, a woman he hadn’t known for very long who had a serious illness.
The first thing I noticed about her was she was heavy-– not someone who looked like they had terminal cancer. She had a smooth, wide, plump face, pudgy arms and a round, protruding belly. Her expression was pleasant and sweet.
She had a pretty mouth, and from the moment we were introduced she couldn’t seem to stop talking, the wide, fleshy lips opening and closing, opening and closing on words that meant nothing and were as interchangeable as pebbles on a beach. Oh Jesus, I thought meanly, telling myself I for sure didn’t like this girl and the ocean of words she was spewing.
“Isn’t this great sushi,” she cried, chewing. And: “You’re such great parents, Julian’s turned out so well, I love him and he loves me, I’ve never met someone so wonderful, I can’t imagine living without him, and have to thank you for raising him as you did because he’s the nicest man I ever met.”
What gibberish, I thought. Julian had been my wild child for years. This was a young woman I didn’t want to spend a single second more with.
Part II: A Death & A Deliverance
Jinny
I tried to put Jinny out of my mind. Julian would meet another girl, the relationship wouldn’t last. But it was impossible. Our house horseshoes around a pretty pool and on many weekends that first summer of Covid, Julian would bring Jinny over and they would stand at one end of the pool and we would stand at the other, shouting commonplaces at one another across the blue water. “How are you?” “How are things going?” “Were you able to get to the store?” “Do you have enough masks? Toilet paper? Provisions?” But it was Jinny who spoke most. In a colorful blouse, thick hair covering her shoulders in dark tresses, she would shout: “Julian has been cooking the most fantastic meals!” Or: “Julian was able to find a dozen rolls of paper towels!!” Or: “Julian cleaned the whole house today and I baked cookies.” (She’d leave a tin of half-burnt ginger snaps on the doorstep.) At the other end of the pool, I wouldn’t quite know what to say.
But that didn’t matter because Jinny did all the talking. To me, she was an alien, a strange blabby being who hurled platitudes across a 20 foot stretch of turquoise water. “Your house is so beautiful!” she’d yell. “Y’all are such nice people, inviting us over like this.” Inside, I’d cringe, thinking who is this person with her endless bullshit? It never occurred to me that the relationship between Julian and Jinny was serious or would last.
But then one morning, Julian called me up, announcing that he and Jinny intended to marry. It was not my finest hour. I didn’t like Jinny, and I was damned if my son was going to tie himself to this miserable girl and inherit all her medical debt. So I made a big scene.
“You can’t marry her!” I yelled over the phone. “If you make it legal, you’ll never get out from under that big pile of bills.” I suggested they just have a ceremony instead.
The fact was, although she was plump and looked like she was brimming with health, Jinny had terminal breast cancer and didn’t have long to live.
Part III: A Death & A Deliverance
Jinny & Julian
Despite her dismal circumstances, Jinny was eternally positive. She had cancer all over her body, but she never whined or complained about what was happening to her. To the contrary: She would tell you she was doing fine and that the doctors only had words of encouragement, advising her she had a good ten years to live. That really gave me pause since she had disease in just about every organ, but what the docs meant was that, as long as they could zap each tumor that bubbled up, they’d be able to maintain her for a while. Every week, she was at the hospital for one or two or three days. Toward the end, her body could no longer produce red blood cells and she had to have frequent transfusions.
But I get ahead of myself. At the time I met Jinny, just as the world was shutting down from Covid, she wasn’t yet visibly sick. With her shiny black hair and attractive roly poly body, she seemed perfectly healthy. From the beginning, I didn’t like her. She talked too much and what she said wasn’t interesting. She’d blab on and on and I’d think of strategies to stop her. What was my son doing with this woman? Ethnically, she was a mix of Thai and African American, her skin a beautiful copper color, and it was easy to see how Julian would be attracted to her. But how on earth could he put up with the constant barrage of words? I began to dread their visits.
From the start, my worry about the relationship had been that Jinny was terminally ill, which meant eventual guaranteed heartbreak for Julian. I just couldn’t understand why he had chosen to walk through that particular ill-fated door.
Jinny’s family was a puzzle, too. In quick succession, not long after I’d first met her, Jinny’s mother, aunt and stepfather died of heart disease and cancer. Her mother, Supanee, who was from Thailand, had for years instructed Jinny and her friends in the ways of Buddhism. Her stepfather, Count, a veteran of the Korean war, had been a stabilizing influence and Jinny had loved him far more deeply than her own father, whom she barely knew.
My true connection to Jinny began at the memorial service for Count. Because we’d shown so little interest in her, my husband and I decided it would make up for things if we put in an appearance at the funeral home. But when we got there, the room in which the service was being held was empty, save for four or five people hanging around the casket in front. As we watched, one of the people broke away and we saw that it was Jinny, gesturing wildly at us to follow her. Her face looked miserable and angry.
Part IV: A Death & A Deliverance
Jinny
Jinny led us out of the room and down a long corridor to a plush couch pushed up against a wall at the very end, about as far away from her fellow mourners as she could get. “They don’t like me,” she muttered through gnashed teeth. “They don’t want me here.”
“Who?” I asked.
“My step siblings. They hate me.”
“What? Why?” I asked.
Her eyes were tear stained and she had a lost look on her face. Her beautiful copper skin was ashen. “Because I wasn’t related to Count. They think I don’t belong here.”
Jinny had loved her stepfather fiercely. She couldn’t imagine not being allowed to grieve for him along with the others. I tried to ease her burden by saying, “Oh, I’m sure everything will turn out all right,” but she knew better. “They refuse to accept my connection with him. I don’t mean to sound crass,” (she rubbed her eyes hard here) “but they probably won’t let me have any of the things he promised me.”
This was the first conversation I had with Jinny that wasn’t gushy, platitude-heavy bullshit. She was a real girl, angry and frustrated, not just a person who walked around radiating almost unbearable positive energy. I began to see her in a different light.
And I wanted my relationship with Julian to be better. He had been my wild child, obstinate and full of crazy notions, a kid who’d been in drunken car wrecks, was fascinated by guns, ran around with questionable people, loved to change persona (he’d dress in a three piece suit one day, and a muscle shirt revealing full sleeve tattoos the next). He and I didn’t get along well. The truth was, I couldn’t relate to him and the conversations we had ran on different tracks, never properly connecting. One day it struck me that if I wanted my bond with Julian to strengthen I’d have to forge a deeper relationship with Jinny. At this point, she was staying for longer and longer periods in the hospital. She’d have an infection and they’d book her in for four or five days. Julian, who was her sole caregiver, was always going over there to see her, so I started going, too. The first time I raised my hand to knock on her closed door, my heart was racing.
Part V: A Death & A Deliverance
Jinny & Nicole
Jinny looked completely different from when I first met her. Her hair was drawn up under a yellow knitted cap and the skin on her cheeks was gray and patchy. But she broke into a big smile when she saw me. “Come in, have a seat,” she called out. I was worried that we wouldn’t have things to talk about, but I needn’t have concerned myself on that score: Jinny, as always, had plenty to say. “Here, have a Coke,” she sang, pushing a can toward me. Her white hospital gown was twisted around her plump body. She was buried deep under the covers, and it was clear she wasn’t feeling well, but she managed to be hospitable, calling the nurse for more ice water and graham crackers and another pillow to prop herself up on. The nurses loved her. Everyone loved her – the girl who was gravely ill, but always had a smile of gratitude on her face for each person who knocked on the door and entered her room. Seeing that, I felt mean for every bad thought I’d ever had about her. It struck me that she was truly appreciated and valued by all the nurses and orderlies who cared for her physical needs. So what was wrong with me that I didn’t give two figs about this sweet, talkative girl who was my son’s girlfriend?
I had no choice but to be kind to her. So I pulled up a chair, and we began to talk about family matters: my daughter, Gabi, who was about to have a baby; my other daughter, Jofka, who’d just bought a house and owned a drooling mastiff as big as a mountain.
As we talked, I relaxed and realized I was enjoying the conversation. This was the first visit of many.
I’d be driving around and the thought would pop into my head: why not visit Jinny? So I’d head for the hospital and my seat at Jinny’s bedside. These visits, I soon understood, were as important for me as for Jinny. Not only was I getting to know her in a more intimate way, but the time I spent at her bedside afforded me a few moments of calm and sanity in a busy, complicated life.
But she was a sick girl. They’d run out of fixes for her – the various chemo treatments they’d administered had stopped working, and there were no more options. It was hard to acknowledge that. The healthy-looking girl burrowed down among the pillows in her narrow bed was going to die, no matter what they did.
Part VI: A Death & A Deliverance
Julian with his brand new niece, my granddaughter
In another part of the hospital, my daughter, Gabi, was having a baby. Her situation was complicated, and I’m not at liberty to talk about it here, but the baby was mixed race, a bit of a mystery baby since we weren’t sure of the sex or color. I wasn’t in the room with her when her daughter was born. The first glimpse I had was of a pink-white little girl with a ton of black, curly hair. She was gorgeous and I fell instantly in love with her. I itched to pick her up. For the second half of the pregnancy, the baby had ridden high beneath Gabi’s ribs, a round, compact nugget, and now here she was, staring at us out of huge black eyes, wondering what the hell this new, brightly-lit place was. The labor had been fairly easy. When the nurse put the baby in Gabi’s arms, she held her like a pro, a big happy smile of joy creasing her tired face. It took me back to Gabi’s birth, which had been very fast (27 minutes hard labor) and had occurred almost entirely in the back seat of the car, me squeezing my legs together tightly to keep the baby from sliding out. But Gabi had had an epidural and experienced very little pain.
Meanwhile, Jinny was still in the hospital and I’d visit Gabi and the new baby in the maternity ward and then take the elevator to the seventh floor where Jinny was. It was a constant switch of emotions – sheer headiness when I was with the baby; worry and anxiety when I was with Jinny. And I had reason to worry. Around the time Gabi gave birth, Jinny fell into a coma.
There was nothing the doctors could do. She was on a one-way trip to the end place none of us could bear to talk about.
To make matters worse, my dog was dying, my beloved, majestic Newfoundland who’d become part of my soul. (As it turned out, she died on the same day as Jinny.) With no way to help her, Jinny was sent home to hospice.
And there she lay in state. A hospital bed was placed in the living room. In her softest nightie, Jinny was installed in the bed, eyes closed, face peeking over the covers as the room began to fill with people.
Nicole sitting with Jinny in the final days of her life
Part VII: A Death & A Deliverance
Jinny, during the ritual Julian held for her
I had never been to a vigil before. Jinny was the central person in the room, lying still as a piece of glass on her narrow hospital bed. She was still breathing, but unless you went up close, you could barely see any movement in her chest. She had a handful of devoted friends, girls she’d known since high school who’d studied Buddhism with her mother. These were the girls who administered to her, doling out meds, wiping drops of moisture from her nose, patting and loving on her.
But the rest of us loved on her, too. There must have been forty people in the room, each one of them lingering at Jinny’s bedside to pay her homage. The vigil lasted a week. We sat in Julian’s living room, waiting for the final moment, the moment Jinny’s heart stopped beating. She was in a coma, but we knew she could hear our words and sense the emotion behind them. On the Sunday, there was a Buddhist service for her, probably not a conventional one, with a lot of odd murmured sounds and clicking of tongues. Special candles were melted over both Julian and Jinny’s feet, hands and foreheads. After that, it was very peaceful.
I had been the last person to talk to Jinny while she was still conscious.
At the time, she was in a nursing home, with a beautiful green tree spreading its branches outside her window. She was very active that day, insisting we walk up and down the hall, stopping at the nurse’s station to ask for snacks or to see if perhaps they’d found Jinny’s phone, which she was constantly misplacing. We walked that hallway at least six times. In the empty common room, she put her hands on my shoulders and told me how much she loved me. Then she hugged me hard, not letting go for a long time.
The next day she went into a coma. Three days later she was sent home for hospice.
In the week that she lay dying, friends and family stayed with her day and night. There wasn’t much talking, but we consumed many cartons of pizza and sat around hollow-eyed, not knowing quite what to do. I wasn’t there when she breathed her last breath. Julian made his own rituals and placed coins over her eyes. Later I was told that she’d had shitty health insurance, and that things might have been different if she’d had better doctors. Whatever the truth was, a light went out when that young, exuberant heart stopped beating. We were all diminished. But inside my head, I still heard that sweet, chatty voice saying, “I’m going to beat this.”
Julian & Jinny
Throughout her illness, especially when Jinny began to spiral downhill so swiftly, Julian had been her main (in fact, her only) caregiver. For the whole last year of her life, he was afraid to leave her alone for even a minute, which meant he rarely left the house. He worried, for instance, that if Jinny attempted to descend the stairs to the kitchen from her bedroom, she would fall and break a limb. And he couldn’t trust her, because, despite her sickly condition, she would insist she was perfectly capable of doing housework or cooking a meal. (She wasn’t really.) As her sole caregiver, Julian couldn’t even leave her long enough to go to the store. He was exhausted. But he had no choice — he had to put one foot in front of the other, and keep going. Jinny grew him up, turned him into a mature, responsible adult. Before his life with her, he’d been as free as the wind, often making terrible choices that got him in trouble. But here he was with a partner who was terminally ill and needed every single ounce of his care and protection. And he did it. He stepped up to the plate, a 32-year-old man who had to grow up quickly and assume the wisdom and maturity of a person much further along in life.
I am so proud of both of them, the one who stayed, and the one who left.
I can truly say that Jinny changed our family, made us stronger and more understanding – hopefully a change we will be able to build on as the years pass. I doubt any one of us will ever forget her.
In loving memory of Jinny, who forever changed our lives
