Grumpa Joe's Place

Some Recollections of My Baby Girl

    When Jacque was born, we placed her in a crib that had formerly belonged to her brother, Steve, who was born eleven months ahead of her, and that is the instant she became his lifelong competitor. She must have received his vibes from the mattress. Throughout her life, she competed with Steve—anything Steve did, she had to do too. Never once in her lifetime did we set a challenge vocally. This competition lasted through grammar school, high school, and college. She finally beat him by getting a master’s degree in nursing.

     Throughout her lifetime, she was never satisfied with her personal achievements. Near the end of her grammar school years, she picked up a love for the Spanish language. One year, when she was about fourteen, she bugged Barb and me to allow her to attend a two-week language camp in Minnesota. Eventually, she broke us down, and we let her attend. I remember we put her on the airplane and came home with tears in our eyes. She came home two weeks later speaking Spanish. From the time she got off the plane in Fargo, North Dakota, near the Minnesota border, she was required to speak only Spanish until she returned home, and we insisted that she talk to us in English. It was during this period that she joined a pen-pal program and began writing to a young man from Spain called Juan Carlos. As far as I know, they are still at it.

     When she was fourteen, her mother, Barb, was diagnosed with breast cancer. That is when she began working in a nursing home. A year later, she set her goal to become a cancer nurse. After proving to me that she had been accepted to the University of Illinois, she decided to attend St. Xavier University, which is located three miles from home. She became a nurse, and her first job was at Resurrection Hospital in Niles, IL.  About a year later, she found a position as a nurse in the stem cell research program at Rush Hospital in Chicago. By that time, she had enrolled in the master’s program at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb.  She worked at Rush full-time and commuted to DeKalb for classes. After a semester of that stress, she decided to quit work and attend school full-time until she completed her degree. Barb and I traveled to DeKalb to witness our baby girl get her master’s degree in nursing.

     Somewhere in time, Jacque traveled to Spain to meet her pen-pal, Juan Carlos. They toured Europe for six weeks by car. Later, he came to America, and she drove him around our country.

     She never returned to Rush but instead joined the VA Hospital in Maywood. There she was in her element, taking care of cancer patients. One of her notable memories was to accompany a seriously ill vet to Washington, D.C., by private air ambulance to visit the Vietnam War Memorial. She had a knack for comforting vets dying from cancer.

     It was at the VA that Jacque met her lifelong friend and travel companion, Kelly. The two of them visited New Zealand, Australia, Japan, and other countries along the way. On one trip, she was to meet Kelly in Tokyo on their way to visit her cousin Claudia, who was stationed with the Navy in Okinawa. Somewhere over Canada, her airplane lost an engine and rolled on its side 90 degrees before the pilot was able to correct it. She was grounded in Anchorage, Alaska, for three days while a replacement engine was air freighted and installed. Eventually, she hooked up with Kelly and Claudia to tour Okinawa.

     In 1990, I was still working at Panduit when my boss presented me with a challenge: go to our division in Singapore and teach them how to maintain our cable tie molds. I had previously turned down this challenge, but I finally decided to accept it. I made the trip three times over the next eighteen months. On my last trip, I asked Barb to join me at the end of the three-week stint so that we could take a vacation together in the far east. She was reluctant to travel so far by herself. She talked Jacque into traveling with her. It turned into a great time. Jacque brought Barb to me, and the three of us traveled together to Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Hong Kong. Without Jacque, I would never have had this time with Barb.

     To this day, I don’t know precisely how Jacque met her partner, Jeff, but I’m sure he can tell the story better than I could. All I can add from this point is that she got lucky when she found him. Together, they were a match made in heaven. Her desire to travel waned from then on as she accepted the new challenges of marriage, motherhood, work, and pursuing her PhD. The doctorate was put on hold so she could fight the cancer. In the end cancer beat her.

Filed under: Biography, family, grief | Tagged: KIds growing up, Memories |