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| Jess in Redondo Beach with her landlord. |
From the day I met Jess, I hoped, just as David did, that one day she would move in with us. I had met Jess on my first trip to Southern California to meet David’s family in the spring of 1964. It took fourteen years, but in the spring of 1978 our wish came true and Jess joined our family in Davis.
Jess was living in Redondo Beach in Southern California. She had purchased a tiny little cottage near the beach by saving up every dime and nickel she could. A friend told her about the cottage that a parishioner had donated to their church. The church was looking for a buyer, and they were willing to sell it for a little down and a little each month. It cost her about $1000 when she bought it in the 1950s. Her husband, Bill, was opposed to buying anything, so Jess went behind his back and purchased the house. She never told Bill; she said they were renting it. Bill had a stroke in the mid-1950s and she nursed him in that little 300 square foot cottage. She was grateful they didn’t have to pay rent through those lean years.
After Bill died in 1960, Jess continued to live in her little dream cottage until the city of Redondo Beach exercised eminent domain and reclaimed the beach property for redevelopment. They did pay Jess $3000 for her little house, but she then had to move to a house where her rent was $500 a month and her income was $600 a month. Jess was very thrifty, having lived in poverty most of her life. She knew how to have more fun on less money than anyone I ever knew.
Jess did some world traveling on her old age pension after old Bill died. She cruised to Panama and flew to Europe to see the sights. She said that old adage about life beginning at seventy proved to be true for her. She had the best clothes money could buy from the thrift store, and people always wanted to know where she got her outfits. Tall and slender, she looked great in anything she put on. She was also a shaker and a mover at her local senior center, where she dubbed the members Seasoned Citizens. She organized weekly activities and many parties for the whole group, plus bus trips to see the sights in Southern California, with discounted rates she arranged for everyone in the group.
In the spring of 1978, for the first time since I had met Jess, she complained that she was very tired. She always cooked herself a big dinner meal; she would set the table, put all the food in serving dishes and then was too exhausted to eat. Because she was coughing and sneezing a great deal, she made an appointment to see her doctor. He immediately hospitalized her with a diagnosis of pneumonia. After about five days in the hospital, Jess told us that the doctor had decided he was going to do surgery on her. She said he was going to look for something in her abdomen, her stomach, her liver or her intestines. I asked if he was just going to cut a big cross in her tummy and search all around the whole area.
I was surprised to hear that a patient with pneumonia was now heading for surgery. I put a call into her doctor, who told me she was having a lot of abdominal pain and he suspected a tumor. He told me her pneumonia was much better. Because she was tough (which I already knew), he felt comfortable in doing the surgery and assured me he would call us the minute the surgery was over. He was as good as his word, but his words were not what we wanted to hear. He said Jess had cancer of her liver with wide-spread abdominal metastases. He said that he did some reconstructive work in her abdomen to make her more comfortable, but he did not plan to do any other treatments. He said at her age the cancer was slow growing. I told the doctor we wanted Jess to come and live with us, and he said that was a great idea. Fortunately for all of us, Jess agreed she was ready to move.
She recovered rapidly after her surgery as she always did. She had a big garage sale to get rid of all the stuff she didn’t want to bring. When she was ready, David flew to Los Angeles, rented a U-Haul truck and gathered up Jess and her treasures. I stayed behind in Davis with our four children, who at that time were 13, 11, 9, and 6 years of age. We all pitched in and got Jess’s room ready for her while David was gone. Kate, the youngest, had agreed to give Great Grandma Gee Gee (the nickname the children had for Jess) her room; she moved in with brother Tom, her idol. He had a bunk bed; he slept on the top and gave Kate the bottom.
By the time Jess arrived in Davis, you would never have known she had even had any surgery. She jumped right into the swirl of our young family life. Having grown up in a large family, she had no trouble settling right in, just as though she had always been with us.
To be continued
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