A Death & A Deliverance - Part III
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.
THIS IS PART 3 of a SEVEN-PART STORY
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7
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.