A great Duncan, Oklahoma love story

Jim and Jean Ann in Duncan, Oklahoma.

It takes about seven hours to drive from Houston where we live to my boyfriend Jay’s childhood home in Duncan, Oklahoma. His mother and father, Jim and Jean Ann, met there when they were just kids at school, six and seven years old. Through the course of their 61 years of marriage they’ve lived in places as far-flung as Kuwait, where their daughter Jamie was a baby, and London, where young Jay picked up an English accent.

Their home in Duncan is a traditional brick two story home with shutters and a large yard in the front and back. Inside there is a plush green carpet, flowered wallpaper, knickknacks and antiques from England on every surface. (My daughter Taylin describes the house as a mix of 1890 and 1990.) Jay’s family likes to collect things, but while Jay has vintage fountain pens, concert posters and mechanical watches, his parents are fond of copper bed warmers and pitchers, delicate hand-painted china, clocks that tic and chime loudly, cat figurines, antique guns and round picture frames encasing old family photos. Every inch of the house is polished to a high glossy finish. (Not a single speck of dust anywhere. Not even above the door jams. I checked.)

About 22,000 people live in Duncan. A sign at a park in the center of town proudly proclaims it’s the “Crapemyrtle Capital of Oklahoma.” (Jay tells me it used to say’ Crapemyrtle Capital of the World,’ but someone called them out on it.) There are a LOT of fast food places. But the coffee house we visit seems fresh and modern with guys looking like lumberjacks on laptops. The buildings along Main Street are low and flat like they were afraid building them too high would attract tornadoes to blow them away. There are squat and stocky pawnshops or places to buy insurance and home appliances. One tiny building was renting videos. (In 2018! Rent three and get one for free!)

In the morning Jay gets up early with his father to “have breakfast with the Chickasaws.” The Chickasaw Nation Senior Center is near his neighborhood, and Jim goes there almost every morning. He’s technically part Choctaw, but Jean Ann is Chickasaw. The Bureau of Indian Affairs, for some reason, makes you choose one or the other so Jamie and Jay are both registered as Chickasaw as well. None of them look particularly Native American, they’re light-skinned, light-eyed with have light brown hair. They’re also devote Southern Baptists. Their heritage and traditions are important to them so Jim and Jean Ann used to spend a lot of time with their Native American friends at the senior citizen center.

These days Jim goes four times a day to the nursing home where Jean Ann now lives. She doesn’t like the noise and commotion in cafeteria so he goes in the morning to feed her breakfast in her room. Then again for lunch. In the afternoon he’ll sit with her for awhile and makes sure she gets supper. He goes back a final time at 7 p.m to get her ready for bed and to brush her teeth. (It’s so beautiful I could cry.)

Jean Ann is doing well this trip so Taylin and I also visit her. She doesn’t remember us, but she remembers Jay and compliments his scarf. She remarks on how tiny Taylin is and how tall I am. (When we first met Jay’s mom her Alzheimer’s wasn’t as bad as it is now. She nicknamed my petite daughter “Cricket,” a name Taylin loves. His mom is also very small. Jim calls her “Weeny,” as in teeny weeny. I love that.)

She tells Jim she loves him. She is having a relatively good day.

Time plays weird tricks in the nursing home. No one suffers from this more than Jean Ann. She struggles to remember what she’s saying while saying it. At one point Jim notices some food near her mouth and wipes it away for her. The rest of the afternoon she keeps touching the same spot as if trying to remember what that was all about.

The TV is on without sound which contributes to this surreal passage of time. The images flash by without context and commercials repeat themselves. At one point Jean Ann expresses concern about a dog. She asks what happened to his feet. No one knows what she’s talking about. Twenty minutes later a commercial for pet adoption charity comes on. A puppy is painfully holding his paws out of the snow one at a time. (A part of me wants to spend a week with her to see whether I could decode all her ramblings like this. I daydream about becoming her Alzheimer’s whisperer.)

On one visit, when Taylin and I get there Jim and Jean Ann are wearing red sweatshirts. Jean Ann also has red track pants on. They are slowly returning from their walk around the grounds. They look like a matching set, as if they’ve learned to lean in the same direction. I smile at her and she responds with a big smile of her own before forgetting what she was doing and returning to a heavy-lidded, dazed sort of stare.

A woman in a wheelchair stops Jim and reaches out for him. He holds her hand and pats it as she whispers to him. After he gets Jean Ann settled in her room he tells us the woman in the wheelchair told him a man, another resident, was saying mean, vulgar things to her. Concerned for her safety Jim runs off to tell the nurses. It’s like he can’t help but take care of other people wherever he goes.

Jay is the same way. He’s wicked smart with amazing attention to detail. (Example: At his parents’ house he wrapped the light switches and outlets in the same wallpaper. He lined it up meticulously so they blend right into the wall making them almost impossible to find. It’s an obsessive compulsive’s dream.)

He uses this super power to dream up ways of making life better for everyone. He does things like pack floss for Taylin, because she likes it after she eats. He packs snacks for me for just in case my blood sugar drops. (He carries all this stuff in a messenger bag he calls his “man bag.” It has exactly what ever anyone needs exactly when they need it. Like a masculine Mary Poppins he’s practically perfect in every way.)

In our seven years of dating I’ve had several surgeries and procedures. Jay nurtures me through every one. He just makes me feel better. When I wake up from anesthesia he’s the only person I want. Once, I had a lovely nurse sneak him into post-op for me. Jay took my hand and rubbed my head and my pain dissipated. His presence so soothing I didn’t need anything else.

I imagine this is what’s happening with Jean Ann when Jim shows up. Even with her struggling memory, that presence is there. His body and her body call out for each other.

Author’s note: I wrote this more than a year ago. This morning as Jay was making me coffee, breakfast, getting me water to take my pills, packing the stuff I’ll need for a trip we’re taking, I remarked: “You’re always caring for me!” He said: “Of course I am! Have you met my dad?” Indeed I have. So I decided to post this sweet story. Since writing this story we’ve lost Jean Ann. We miss her very much, but no one as much as Jim.

Jim and Jean Ann on their wedding day, August 30, 1957.