Jackie
JACKIE
September 2009
Jackie was one of my nicest friends and I was very fond of her. Over the forty years of our friendship we shared our thoughts as we watched our children grow up to become parents themselves. We celebrated their successes, and commiserated with each other over their problems, and always we were there for each other. I consider myself fortunate to have known such a gracious and vibrant woman.
We understood each other, although we were very different. I was outspoken and blunt while Jackie was always gentle and ladylike, and the mixture produced a friendship in which we both felt so comfortable. Our favourite topics, hardly earth-shattering in importance, were the deplorable state of today's fashions and the Royal Family's carryings on. And we laughed a lot. The laughter is something I will always remember when I think of Jackie. She pretended to be shocked at some of the things I said in my unrestrained way and she would chide me so gently, but then we would both break up and roar with open-mouthed, head-thrown-back gales of laughter. I wonder if anyone else saw that side of Jackie.
We did have some serious things to say. Politics took up a fair share of our time and music was always a source of disagreement because Jackie loved the classics, while I am a fervent jazz fan. Sport? Jackie played a vigorous game of tennis and she took up golf until a bad foot put paid to that, while I haven't the slightest interest in such madness. I suppose you could say we had very little in common, but that would be untrue - we had that rare thing: a no-nonsense sense of real friendship.
We would meet often for lunch. We talked about everything under the sun but, because we had so much to say, we tended to limit discussion of children and grandchildren to a few minutes - those times together were for our own selfish concerns that nourished our souls. I always felt refreshed afterwards.
I first saw Jackie at a Tennis Club awards dinner in the early 1970s. I was impressed with her dignity and elegance, her long silver gown and impeccable blonde hair. She was always well-turned out. We became friends quickly. With our somewhat out-dated English accents we sounded like two gentlewomen out of The Importance of Being Earnest; our Canadian friends loved it.
We signed up for a course on memory improvement, which was huge fun. The word-association exercises were fair game for more laughter. One of our fellow students was Mildred and, as part of our studies, we associated her name with Mildew. I remember chatting with Mildred while Jackie stood behind her mouthing, "Mill-Dew" with a fiendish grin on her face. She was wicked sometimes, but always a lady.
We studied French together at l'École Francaise. Jackie was very serious about it and she played French language tapes on her car radio. She spoke French with a delightful accent.
I think it was when she told me she was having trouble driving that I first realized something was amiss. I thought it might be her eyesight, but it quickly became evident that it was more than that - for a while she was quite adept at pretending, but she was not able to fool me for long.
As Jackie gradually left us she still enjoyed our lunches together, indeed she became quite imperious when she would phone me and demand to be taken out for lunch. I was only too happy to oblige, and I would try to find places we called Cheap & Cheerful, just for the fun of it. She always agreed when I suggested I might choose her meal from the menu - as time went by it was difficult for her to make her own choices. She was adamant that she should pay her own bill, and her husband would put some money in her purse, which she would solemnly hand to me, saying, "You do it so much better than I do".
Jackie enjoyed her food. She used to boast when I took her home that her lunch was delicious but often she would have forgotten what she had eaten. In fact, by then she didn't recognize her own house, and always asked me, "Who lives in that house?" I would reply ever so gently, "You do, Lovey." She loved being called Lovey, and sometimes she called me Lovey too.
It was distressing to watch the decline of my dear friend. The cruel disease progressed rapidly, it seemed no more than two years from its onset, and it took me by surprise. There were so many things still to be said, so many laughs still to be had. The last time I saw her, in the hospice, she smiled her beautiful smile. I am not sure she knew me, but she still had the gentle graciousness I remembered. I thought she might just have retained a hint of a memory of our good times together, and I was a little comforted.
I have written this for Jackie's grandchildren. They will have their own memories of their grandmother, but this is a side of her that they probably never knew. She was a lovely person, enthusiastic about life and her family, and she was my friend.
