I received some bad news the other day, my friend Jeanette Lucey passed away. If there are any followers of my blog from the very first years of my blogging here, they may remember I was blogging at two places, this blog as my own blog, and Jeanette’s blog, J’s Café Nette, as part of a team of three, Jeanette, Sue, and me. Jeanette’s blog was a political blog, and the three of us commented on the politics of the day. I started this blog as a refuge from the grind of daily politics, which in time I came realize is caustic to one’s soul. I set up my personal blog to get away from the political wars and dwell on things I enjoyed. I have been mostly true to that.
The J’s Café Nette blog was definitely commenting from a conservative perspective, and from what I remember—and I could be remembering incorrectly—Jeanette was probably the most balanced of the three of us. She tried to be fair and give the Democrats and Liberals the benefit of the doubt, while I jumped on the most cynical elements of the left. I was convinced—and still am—that the left was out to destroy the traditions of this country and Western culture, and I think my posts tended in that vitriolic direction. As I think back on it, perhaps Jeanette may have been embarrassed by my style. I wouldn’t be surprised. Politics could stir a lot of passion out of me, and I wasn’t shy with expressing it. Jeanette, ever the lady, accepted me while trying to soften my approach.
How we met and how I was invited to blog at Jeanette’s blog is worth telling. We both frequently commented on The Anchoress blog. It was a Catholic blog but Anchoress (Elizabeth Scalia) often spoke on the politics of the day, and she rooted her politics to her Christian, and more specially, Catholic principles. Both Jeanette and I enjoyed that blog and commented frequently. Now in those days it was common for blogs to keep a roll of sympathetic other blogs on their page, and J’Café Nette was one on Anchoress’s page. I clicked it and found it to my liking. I became a frequent commenter there and one day Jeanette sent me an email inviting me to join her and Sue on her blog. Actually as I was reminiscing through my past emails with Jeanette, I found the very one. Here is a screenshot of that email.
You can see Jeanette’s faith on display with her email footer: “Trust in the Lord…”
Although
Jeanette liked The Anchoress, I need to stipulate Jeanette was not
Catholic. She was a Baptist, and she early
on reassured me she was not one of those anti-Catholic Protestants. For one thing she told me a joke about
Baptists in heaven.
A man dies and he’s led through the corridors of heaven, and he sees various rooms with doors ajar. That room is for the Methodists; that room is for the Presbyterians; that room is for the Catholics. Then they pass a room with the door closed. Don’t look into that room the guide says, that room is for the Baptists. But why is the door closed? They think they’re the only ones in heaven.
After she told me that joke, I knew we would be good friends. She also told me about an anti-Catholic who criticized the praying of the Hail Mary. When she looked into it, she told me, the words are taken right out of the Bible.
She asked about certain Catholic rituals. I did my best to explain them, though I don’t think I was at the time able to make them clear. I remember she asked about Catholic funerals. My memory is a little vague here but I think she said her mother, who was Native-American, returned to her Catholic faith late in life and had a Catholic funeral.
Of course I accepted Jeanette’s invitation to blog, but now if you look at the date of the Jeanette’s email, it was in March of 2010. That was a month and a half before my wife and I went to Kazakhstan to adopt our son Matthew. We were gone for another month and a half. It was quite an experience and if I remember correctly I gave updates from Kazakhstan on how the process was going. I think I posted to her blog from abroad, but my memory is vague. I wish I could get a hold of the old J’s Cafe Nette posts but she dissolved them all into the nether sphere when she closed down the blog.
Over the years, Jeanette would always ask me about my son. (And I should mention that Sue is also very good about asking on how Matthew is doing.) Jeanette had a theory on why my son was so friendly with strangers. As an infant in an orphanage, he was picked up by lots of strangers and just did not develop a fear. It’s quite a plausible theory. She asked for pictures of Matthew even after we had stopped blogging.
I
loved going through our past email exchanges.
Here is a paragraph from an exchange back in February of 2016. The Republican Primary was coming up in her
state, and I asked who she was voting for.
For the first time in my life I am truly undecided. Definitely not Trump! Enough of Bushes and Clintons, not Cruz as he is too stringent and the Canadian thing might bite him in the butt; especially if Trump decides to pursue it. If he doesn’t you can count on the Dems doing it, but he’s the Republican version of Obama. His way or no way. Carson is inexperienced and doesn’t have a chance. That leaves Rubio and Kasich. Rubio is a first-term senator and we already have that and look where that got us. Kasich wants to cut the military but probably civilian jobs that are redundant. So I don’t know and won’t know until I touch the screen on Saturday.
That was the theme in that primary, “Definitely not Trump!” I shared that sentiment too, and I don’t have a recollection on who she actually voted for in the primary, but we both voted for Trump in the general.
There was another email about waiting at the hospital while the doctors performed a delicate operation on her husband’s spine.
I could feel the presence
of the Lord as I sat there all day Monday waiting to hear it was over. I got butterflies in my stomach when they
told me the operation had started and I said a silent prayer to ask Him to calm
me. It must have happened immediately
because I do not recall having butterflies after that.
If there is one single comment that characterizes Jeanette, it’s that one. She was a woman of faith and family and love. The operation went well I was told.
In time both Jeanette and Sue began to grow tired of blogging. Perhaps it was the dark days of the Obama administration that made us all so cynical. (She sent me a link to a clock that counted down the days to Obama being out of office!) So around August of 2013, Jeanette officially closed down her blog. I posted here about that day, and I urge you to read it. Jeanette posted a comment, and just like these quotes I posted here it’s wonderful to relive her words and with a little imagination I can hear her voice as I read them.
I will be forever grateful to Jeanette for introducing me to blogging. I would never have started this blog if not for her and Sue. They were my mentors. In honor of Jeanette I will do something that this blog has resisted for these dozen years. I will break my rule of not going into politics and announce who I will vote for and why in the coming presidential election, and no it is not either of the major candidates. So stay tune for that.
It is with a tear in my eye I went through these past email exchanges. She passed away much too young. You can read her public obituary here. Oh wow, she had the same birthday as my father. I never knew.
Eternal rest grant
unto Jeanette, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon her.
May her soul and the
souls of all the faithful departed rest in peace. Amen.
We
never did meet in person Jeanette . If
someday I am led to that room with all the Baptists, I’m going to knock, have
you come out, and give you a big hug we never had a chance to give in
life. Take care, my friend.
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