Jean Frances Lucas McIntosh

Jean Frances Lucas McIntosh passed from this earth around 1:00pm on August 23, 2013.
Her daughter Sarah, my wife, was with her in the hospital. At her end time, she was surrounded, as usual, by our family and her grandchildren Sylvia, Sophia, and Luca. She had the opportunity to express her love for the people she lived with and for her son Kenny who lives a country apart in her hometown, Morgantown, West Virginia and they, in turn, expressed their love for her. This was not always easy for her in her life, nonetheless, she loved and was loved openly and unconditionally.
Jean shared many stories with me in the past few months. After years of self-regulation, she had started going to doctors and allowing us to attend to her health needs. She didn’t want to inconvenience her family. Though little time has passed since her passing, it is easy for me to see Jean through the arc of her life.
Jean was born February 16, 1928. She was a very intelligent and inquisitive person who was surprisingly adventurous. Jean was a singer, an activist, a researcher, and a pilot. She’s likely among a rare few women who learned to fly an airplane but never drove a car. She served in the air force among the first women to do so and she supported her family and community using her mind, energy, and her humor.
Jean was an excellent cook, experienced in southern cooking, but able to learn to cook new things driven by other’s tastes or recipes she found in cookbooks; the cookbooks she loved. Jean was a voracious reader and was reading Jacque Pepin’s biography as her last book. Jean cooked and cleaned and attended to our family’s needs in her own way. She lived with us since 1989 in concert with the arrival of our first daughter Sylvia.
Sylvia, Sophia, and Luca went to the school of grandma. They were raised by grandma and they are deeply connected to her. This was a gift to them and to her, particularly in our modern times when in many cases, extended families are de-emphasized and the nuclear family moves from here to there to pursue a living. Grandma moved with us, and today, in her absence, our house is very quiet. There is a silence; a missing piece. We will have to adjust, most of all Sarah.
Jean took care of Sarah, and Sarah, very early on due to life’s circumstances, took care of Jean and Jean’s mother as well. Soon, together, they took care of Jean’s grandchildren. Sarah and my children. We did it together, warts and all…no manual included…trials and tribulations, but always focused on life and family.
Jean told me she heard some songs being played in her mind, with a full orchestra, in the last few days of her life. Less than five feet tall and very fit in many ways, Jean was brave and tough. She had a big heart that finally gave out.
In the end, she allowed me to summon the best of what I could offer as a human being to another being; what my family raised me to be… she tested me in many ways. In the end, she gave me the opportunity to see the constancy and current that runs through mankind. This reminded me of what is important and most meaningful in life.  Words do not come that describe this that do not fall to cliché…but I have seen this in my wife, my children, my family when I lost each of my parents years ago. Compassion, separates us from beasts, said the poster my mother created and had hanging on her wall attributing the words to Gideon.  
Jean, like all of us, was many things. She had multiple identities, some changed over the years in different settings and for different people. These last six months, Jean let me into a vision of herself as she was years ago. World War II ended, and a beautiful, young, petit, adventurous girl found herself carried away by life’s tosses and turns. Many times, I think, like flying inside a washing machine, but other times, that she remembered fondly, as experiences that were as good as they get.
Jean was a simple woman with few needs. In the last few months, she enjoyed and appreciated the taste of food like no one I have ever seen. She watched the birds, she felt the sun on her skin, and she followed the news; the news of the world and the news of her family. I am grateful for what she offered our family and I miss her.
I am sure that she had the last word, the last laugh, and that she arranged her end time to our greatest possible convenience. Perhaps years of relationships and circumstances and the stuff of life arranged themselves to obscure the great value and worth she had, like every human being. I am glad that she lived and died with as much dignity and love as we could muster as a family. This is what every human deserves, but many are not afforded.