If there’s any sort of internet in Heaven, Laura Jean will be expecting me to write something about her now. She represented about half of my readers on my blog and she always made comments to me about things she read here. Hey Laura Jean!
Laura Jean was my aunt but I’ve never been happy with just that as a descriptor. Every time I’ve ever had to try to describe Laura Jean to a new person in my life, I’ve always said, “but not like your aunt”. Laura Jean was my dad’s older sister, born in the 1930s and as a result of the times, she became a leader and protector for her younger sister and three younger brothers. She lived next door to my family and since she lived alone from the time her mother died in the 1970s, she was more or less a part of our immediate family. Sunday lunches, holiday gatherings, birthdays…Laura Jean was invited to them all. In addition to that, I had this job for a while that took me past her house in the afternoons and I got to spend several afternoons each week hanging out with her. So yes, Laura Jean was my aunt but she was also my neighbor, my third parent, and she was my friend.
When I was little, Laura Jean’s house was just an extension of my house. There was a very worn trail through the grass between our houses and I’m sure I walked that path at least once a day. I’m not a person who remembers a lot from being very young, but I do have a vivid memory of drawing on notebook paper on an end table in Laura Jean’s house when I was tiny. My first drawing memory. Her open carport was a regular place to play when I was younger and a regular stop on our bike adventures when I was older. There was always a refrigerator in the utility room or in the carport and she kept it stocked with soft drinks and popsicles so she could offer us treats. Actually, most of the cousins or friends with me at the moment would enjoy a fresh cut watermelon she would crack open for us on a hot summer day. I hate watermelon so she’d get me a popsicle.
She worked second shift at Spartanburg General Hospital (now Spartanburg Regional Medical Center) where she worked in the Emergency Room. She was the head nurse and though I know she would object to such language, she was the epitome of a badass. We always heard her friends tell us stories about how some crazy, drunk person came into the ER wanting to fight everyone and she would walk over and grab the crazy person by the arm and drag them out of the hospital like a rag doll. She was a fierce leader and by all accounts, a wonderful boss. She made lifelong friends in the ER among nurses and doctors.
I was embarrassingly older when I realized everyone in the world didn’t call her Laura Jean. I kept hearing people refer to “Laura” and I didn’t understand why they didn’t use her whole name. Turns out only her family called her Laura Jean, spoken in one breath with no pause so that it sounds like “Larjean” if you’re from South Carolina.
She loved dogs and ALWAYS had a dog until the final years of her life. When I was little it was two big Dobermans that she kept in the fence behind her house. She would come home from work around 11:30 pm, unlock her door, and send “Lady” inside to inspect the house. Once it was all clear, she’d feed both dogs and go to bed. I went with her to pick out a few dogs in my life and I got to watch those dogs get absolutely spoiled with treats. Laura Jean treated dogs as well as she treated people and she loved to shower them both with treats. One of those happy dogs had a belly that almost dragged the ground because of those treats.
Laura Jean loved to shop, especially for groceries and oh my goodness she loved her a coupon. One of her greatest quirks was that she would get a coupon for something or see something on sale, something that she had zero interest in, but if it was a really good deal, she would buy it. If she had 40 of them already in her pantry, she would buy 5 more to get 5 free. The thing was, she never bought this stuff for herself. She was always thinking of who she could give these great deals to. She was always thinking of who might need them. She was always thinking of others. When I went to college, Laura Jean would send me a large paper grocery bag filled with groceries every single Sunday when I drove back to school. She would also send things like toasters, plates, bowls, cleaning supplies, and whatever else she thought I could use.
She did the same for everyone she knew. She grew tomatoes, cucumbers, and squash and I’m sure she ate one or two but mostly she grew them to give them away. She was constantly taking a bag of produce to her friends. From the many apple trees between our houses, she provided apples to the majority of Spartanburg county.
Her generosity went far beyond produce. She was fond of baking banana bread and zucchini bread. (If zucchini bread sounds gross to you, give it a try. I liked it long before I started eating green things.) She would bake several loaves when she had things in season and she’d freeze them. When people would come to visit or when she would go see an old friend, she always provided a loaf of bread as a gift. It was very tough to leave her house empty handed. And Laura Jean was also very generous with money. She would loan large sums of money to her family and it was common for her to wait a while and then tell them to not worry about ever paying her back. Other times she would just slip family members a check as a gift during hard times. She loved to ask me to come “work” for her, which meant cleaning out her gutters or pruning some things with a chainsaw for a couple of hours. She did this basically just so she could give me money without me fussing about it. When she decided to give her car to someone several years ago, she just did it and didn’t care what people thought about it. She knew she couldn’t give everyone a car and she knew people might think it was unfair but she knew she could give a car to this person, so she did. Laura Jean did what she wanted. Usually what she wanted was to be the most generous person anyone knew.
About 25 years ago Laura Jean was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was pretty bad and she needed a double mastectomy, lots of chemotherapy, and radiation treatment. She lost all of her hair and bought a wig. She got fake breasts that she would wear if she was going out of the house and after a very tough year or so, her hair grew back and she was back to her old tricks again. She was so tough and it was so impressive how she fought through such a terrible sickness. The cancer would come back periodically and each time Laura Jean would beat it down. Each time it came back in a different location and I remember talking with her one day in her living room when she explained that no matter where it was located, it would still be considered breast cancer. She told me that a patient is never really “cancer free” after having cancer the first time. She said her cancer doctor told her that she would keep having new bouts with cancer and that eventually it would kill her. This is how Laura Jean talked. Very straight-forward and very honest. More and more as she grew older, if she thought it, she said it.
“It looks like you’ve put on some weight” was one of my favorite ones to hear at family gatherings. I would bust out laughing and hope the person she was talking to didn’t see me. If she thought your kid was weird or you were making bad choices, guess what? She would tell you. She had no filter and I loved that about her. I talked to her with the same honesty and she appreciated that. I told her she had “old people disease”. She asked what that meant and I told her that it meant that she said everything she thought. She laughed.
Laura Jean always looked much younger than she was. While she was the oldest in the McAbee family, she never looked it. If you ever saw her going to eat lunch with her friends, you’d think she was far younger than the other ladies in the group. Then you’d find out they were classmates in nursing school. Even with cancer, she seemed healthier than most of her friends and as she moved into her 80s, she outlived most of them.
Her sense of humor was pretty great and that was one of my favorite things about her. We would sit and laugh most of the time we were together. While we discussed some major things and some heavy things, we would always find a way to make light of tough situations. She found humor in her cancer treatments and told me funny stories about going to funerals. She loved a funeral. I think she started planning her own funeral about 20 years ago. She would go to the funeral of a friend and come home with ideas of what she wanted and didn’t want for her funeral. I hate funerals and I don’t go to them. She would always tell me that I should go and I would always make fun of her for going to so many. Each time she traded for a new car over the last decade she would tell me that this might be her last new car. Each time she got a new photo taken she would tell me she was having obituary photos taken. She was laughing, but she was serious too. When her beloved little dog Shugah died a couple of years ago, she told me she wasn’t going to get another dog because she didn’t want to die and leave a dog for someone to have to take in. When she started having mystery pains in her chest about a year ago she told me that her cancer was back and that she wasn’t going to do any treatments. She said she was tired. She said it was just her time. Again, always direct and honest. She said whatever she thought.
She would have told you that she was not a tech-savvy person, but for an 86 year old, she navigated the iPhone, iPad, her laptop, Facebook, and Instagram very well. She might lose an app icon or forget how to unsilence her phone every once in a while, but she was pretty good otherwise. She checked Facebook and Instagram very regularly and if I didn’t post anything on Instagram for a day, she would text me to check in. She was perhaps the most dedicated liker of my butt drawings each Monday. She may have also been the most regular submitter of butt photos which I still think is hilarious. For an old-fashioned Southern Baptist lady, she seemed to find more than her share of funny butt photos online. It always made my day when she would send me one. Even when her health declined rapidly over the last month, she managed to send me two new ones.
Because of my antics on Instagram during quarantine, she would also make fun of me for dressing up in female roles for my Art Remix photos. She loved to take a verbal shot at me at a Sunday lunch and it was always pretty funny. Last Christmas she gave me a mysterious gift to unwrap in front of everyone. After tearing off the paper I opened a special case that held her two fake breasts that she used to wear after surgery. There was a note that indicated these may come in handy for me since I dressed as a woman so often. Do I have these gifts and this note in the special case in a special place in my studio? You know I do and you know I will treasure them for many years.
Laura Jean loved her people. She was the most kind and the most generous. Lucky was the person who knew her and luckier was the person who was loved by her. Luckier still was me, her nephew, her neighbor, and her friend.
