Yesterday I learned via text that my friend Jeannie died. She was killed by the most swift-moving cancer that I’ve ever heard of — “cancer of unknown primary”. I struggle to even write about her in the past tense because she was one of the most vibrant and alive people I’ll have the pleasure of knowing. She attacked life with a constant smile and a joyful can-do spirit befitting a woman who had FOUR kids in quick succession and showed up for all of them — dropoffs, signups, hosting the birthday parties, planning the vacations. She also somehow had no issue taking on more kids, as she helped drive carpool or even look after mine(!) We were not worthy!
We became friends through our now tween daughters, who attended preschool together when they were three have continued to go to school together ever since. As fellow loudass, no BS Texas girls in LA, we shared a cultural shorthand and mutual friends from our college years.
Community-oriented, she was always in-the-know, asked the direct questions, and proved a reliable source of hot tea. She gave of herself, constantly. She volunteered for the local YMCA, participating with her whole family in its various programming and events, and sharing with hot mess moms like me what I needed to know about sports or summer camps.
I’ll remember her on the sidelines of a schoolwide 5K, holding up fun posters to cheer on her husband while surrounded by three of her kids and two of mine, cheering and bouncing up and down in a show of support for us runners. I’ll remember how she gifted me with her talent — the meticulous work of lash extensions — in her backyard, the week before my book tour, to send me off feeling pretty. I’ll remember how our tweens were fighting and she texted me going, “Even if our girls are beefing, you and I will always be cool.” I’ll remember her in the season of our lives when she was pregnant all the time but never ever seemed tired, only energized by growing and giving life.
It is breathtaking to process that someone who was so young, so vivacious, so generous with her one wild and precious life … is no longer alive. Her spirit lives on in her children, and her memory is a blessing to all of us. My hope is to remember and honor her by living my days more like Jeannie, with moxie and appreciation for all the love that is in it, as we truly don’t know how many days we have left. The cancer came so fast. She left us so soon. Hug your loved ones. Hug them tight.