EuloJeanie
Eulogy by Quinn Drew | 10 June 2022
Friends, family… … … exes (I mean, this is a pretty queer funeral, after all) –
In the days immediately after Jean died, I saw her all over the place: in the coyote who sat in the field next to us as we picked out her plot here at Graceland, in the kid talking loudly about dinosaurs at the table next to me at Rainbow Cone, through the speakers at Wrigley when they played “Dancing on My Own.” And of course, she is here in all of us today.
I met Jean in 2001 after I’d transferred into St. Norbert, and admittedly, I was having a hard time settling in. Then Jean walked into one of my classes with a pink streak in her hair, an outrageously large backpack, and a confident stride that demanded attention (not that she wanted any). I just knew she was a person I could trust.
Not too long after, she was hanging out with a few of her friends on a break between classes, making plans to go see Queer As Folk at the gay bar in Green Bay, which wasn’t exactly close by the way, and I invited myself along.
She… tentatively agreed.
That night a group of us rode awkwardly in the car, watched the show, and then I think to everyone’s surprise, we danced on the stage for an hour or so after the show.
And that was it - we were friends.
Over time, we became best friends. Junior year, we studied abroad at the same school in London, but opposite semesters. I sent her with my Kairos cross; something I wore daily to guide and remind me to live each day to the fullest.
We graduated the next year – yes, the same year. When people questioned her silver-streaked hair and my boyish-charmed face, she’d say, “I’ve aged appropriately. Quinn won’t stop Benjamin-Buttoning.”
We spent the next several years chasing each other around the country.
She moved back to Chicago while I stayed in Wisconsin. Jean found it particularly funny that her queerest friend taught middle school religion. I found it hilarious that she had a subscription to Cat Fancy for years before she had cats.
Jean moved to DC to live with her other best friend Michael, and I moved to the northern Chicago burbs. In November 2006, I coordinated a surprise trip out to see Jean with her other other best friend Nick. We drank 1 million beers on the rooftop deck, danced until the lights came on at the local queer bar, and thread the needle on what would become known as our “group marriage” for years.
I moved to New York, and not long after, Jean left DC. She took a “sabbatical” in Austin, Texas for a few months, and she embraced every second of that break before moving back to Chicago for what we call Rotary 2.0: The L&D Years. (That’s Learning and Development, not Ellen DeGeneres.)
Nick and I perfected something we called “Jeanknapping” almost immediately after we moved to Kenosha. We’d show up at her door mostly unannounced, tell her to pack her busy-bag and feed Eliot the Cat, and then we’d scoop her into the backseat, toss on some T Swift, and take her home with us. After a weekend that included far too much coffee and beer, too many hours of running, and too many episodes of The OC or Vampire Diaries, we’d send her home on the Metra with snacks and a roadie.
If you know Jean, you know she had boundaries. Compartmentalizing was her jam. When I started working at Rotary in 2014, she insisted that while we could continue to be best friends outside of work, we were colleagues at work. It lasted for about 8 months before she slightly drunkenly wrapped her arms around me after the staff picnic and said, “Love you, buddy” as I was leaving. In that moment, the wall between “work us” and “friend us” came down. Jean, in fact, was my family. I taught her how to tie a bow tie, and to drive stick; and it was her advice I sought first in all my big decisions.
Our queer fam gathered for my birthday in 2016 and Jean spent most of the night texting with and gushing about her new crush, Ruth. Jean transformed into her happiest, most loving self. She believed in hope – specifically the hope Emily Dickinson wrote about: the thing with feathers – that perches in the soul – and sings the tune without the words – and never stops – at all.
Jean and Ruth got married on September 21, 2019 and sketched out a whole lifetime of adventures together. But only two short years later, in September 2021, Jean was diagnosed with Stage IV colon cancer.
In the earliest days, she’d steal away moments to stand in front of the mirror and say, “I have 6 months to live,” just to see how it felt. She was never one to shy away from hard things, in fact, she embraced them.
See, Jean was obsessed with the Greek myth of Sisyphus – sentenced to an eternity of rolling a boulder up a hill, only for it to return to the bottom, and for him to start again.
“When I used to be a sad person,” she said, “I related to the absurdity of the world and debating the value of committing ‘philosophical suicide’” – that is to ignore the truth that the world is dark and sad and terrible, and instead live a blissful and happy life—
She continued, “Should we not all be like Sisyphus and remain completely aware at all times of the truth?”
In the sad times, it’s easy to imagine Sisyphus hating this eternal task.
But in her mid-30s, when things were turning around, she came back around to Camus’ telling, and she noted the last lines of the tale: we must imagine that Sisyphus is happy.
I’m not saying that Jean was happy about any of this. Far from it.
But I distinctly remember a conversation with her in October, one month after her diagnosis, in which we talked about regret. “Do I regret that I got struck by a fatal illness at 38?” she asked, “YES. But my life? My choices? I don’t feel any regret. I’ve been fucking killing it.”
And she sure was.
Take a moment to look around. We are surrounded by Jean’s love (and let’s be honest, a little of her skepticism), because she made an impact on each of us. Whether we bounced a ball across a street, drove across the country or across the city, sang and stomped to Rivers and Roads, shared a beer (or 10) at a happy “hour,” made potatoes or s’mores over a campfire, shared in a run or a bike ride, laughed and cried in a makeshift office at a hotel for a work trip, tie-dyed tee shirts and anything white we could find, strolled through museums, talked about cats, learned about dinosaurs, or simply chatted on Teams or texts – Jean made us feel like we mattered. She made us better people.
We know her as the best in each of us, but truly, she always wanted to be the best for us.
In her last days, Jean was unsteady on her feet. She moved around slowly – cautiously calculating each step. But nothing could stop her from running from the bedroom to the kitchen when she heard Ruth cry out, having tripped hard over the open dishwasher. She braced herself in the doorway and half-asked, half-screamed: “Babe! Are you ok?!”
Ruthie, Jean will always love you. You carry her heart with you, and are never without it. Anywhere you go, she goes, my dear. For you carry her heart in your heart. And we, we will always hold yours.
Jean, I will never stop missing you.
I love you, buddy.