Spring 2023 COVER STORY: Where Love Lived First

Photo by James Riccardo & Jenny Lee

They say that grief merely exists where love once lived. In a beige house, with green shutters and flowers decorating the perimeter, is where Jacqueline Thomann’s love lived first. 

Growing up in Suffolk, Long Island, Jacqueline had no shortage of community. Between a two minute walk or a 20 minute drive, her family was in close proximity, their roots running tight. Both her parents have large families, so Jacqueline has endless amounts of cousins. “I think there’s now 30 of us — I don’t know. It just keeps getting bigger and bigger … everybody just thinks that reproducing is the best,” she laughs with amusement in her eyes. 

As a child, Jacqueline expressed that same mirth she has now — she was vibrant; buzzing around, her aura humming with energy. “I just loved life … That’s what my parents made me appreciate — every little thing from the soil to the air.” But in loving life so fiercely, she would also experience the ferocious depth of grief.

It’s Beginning to Hurt

In her home’s brand new office, Jacqueline sat facing the window, looking out to her long driveway. She vividly recalls the details of this memory: Her mom sitting her down in the third grade, telling her that her favorite second grade teacher has passed away from brain cancer. 

I just remember starting to sob … That person in my life was so influential. Genuinely, that was the best teacher I probably have ever had in my life. When she passed away, it just really opened my eyes to the real world.

The following year, her grandfather passed away from Parkinson’s disease. He used to sit in a padded, beige rocking chair — his chair. That year, Jacqueline had to watch that chair transform into a hospital bed. 

Photo by Elinor Franklin

“I didn’t really understand that loss,” says Jacqueline. For a lot of the kids, that was the first death in the family. At the funeral, she remembers hearing her little cousins yell, “Nice throw!” because instead of placing the roses into the hole of the earth where her grandfather would soon lie, they chucked them, effectively starting a new tradition. “It’s not a Thomann funeral if you’re not getting hit in the head with roses,” Jacqueline states.  

By the time she was in fifth grade, her other grandpa had passed from a brain bleed following a bad fall. But, even amidst the sorrow, it served as a turning point for Jacqueline, who got to meet a lot of her extended family. “I kind of started to almost appreciate funerals because everybody is coming in … we have people coming from all over — from Canada and Ireland — coming in to say hello and pay their respects.” 

From there, it became a normal occurrence — a death almost every year. Despite not every death making sense, each time she moved forward, until one time she couldn’t. 

Holes in the Floor of Heaven

During those years, her father was traveling a lot. He was the Vice President of Turner Construction, but to Jacqueline, he was everything. When her brother was 12 and she was 13, her mom sat them down in her father’s car and told them the news she had been hiding for so many years: “Daddy has cancer.” Jacqueline remembers the sounds of silence and sniffling. When did this happen? Her father had Melanoma Cancer — the deadliest form of skin cancer — since she was in first grade. Is he going to be ok? “I don’t know,” says her mom. 

Suddenly, those “business trips” he took lost their innocence after she learned they were for treatment. At first, Jacqueline was upset at the withheld information, but she quickly realized the circumstances.

How do you tell a first grader that your favorite person in the world has cancer?

By the time she was told the news, her father’s cancer had reached stage 4, but her family was adamant not to treat him any differently. On her last family vacation, they traveled to St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands. Her father had a cane and cancer up the length of his arm. Throughout the trip, she remembers her dad picking up his arm constantly, as if it was asleep. Even still, she laughs recalling how he moved the Iguanas with his cane to get a better view. “If you knew my dad, it was just so on brand,” Jacqueline beams.

Photo by James Riccardo & Jenny Lee

Her family moved forward, one small solution at a time. They built a ramp throughout the house, and his work sent a driver when he couldn’t drive anymore. Even when he couldn’t travel, he encouraged Jacqueline to go. He worked until he couldn’t, relentlessly. “I didn’t think my dad would die in a million years, but I knew where we were headed,” says Jacqueline.

One day, something in her gut was telling her to go home. Jacquline doesn’t fake anything — and yet, that day she lied to get out of school. She came home to hear her father shuffling, not picking up his feet. It turns out that her father was in the worst pain of his life and he was going to a hospice care facility. Jacqueline was the last person to see her dad at the house. “We’re going to get through it — you’re going to be fine. I love you.” Those were her words as she watched the person who made the house feel like home, leave.

The majority of her eighth grade year was spent in the hospice care facility. School to hospice. Softball to hospice.

I got dressed for my eighth grade dance in a hospice room, while other girls were getting dressed in their bedroom.

No one but her neighbor and family knew about her father. Assuming he would get better, she and her brother made a pact not to tell anyone. By July third, he fell into a vegetative state and never woke up. 

That night, she said her goodbyes to her dad, and slept on his side of her parent’s bed. She dreamt of her father, and her father’s death. “I spoke to heaven. I spoke to my dad where I couldn’t in person.”

The next day, on the Fourth of July, her uncle ushered their car onto the highway. She remembers watching pops of color glitter over the treetops from every angle. Fireworks and stars breaking up the night sky with glimpses of light, like opening holes into the floor of heaven.

Ripping Apart the Sky

“The hardest thing I’ve ever had to see in my life was not his body in the casket, but laying there in the hospice bed.” One thousand people came to her father’s wake. Just like that, her world was ripped from her, gravity uprooted. 

She would spend the rest of her life hearing, “I’m sorry for your loss,” “be strong” and “I know what it’s like to feel your loss” from people unsure of how to console her. She would grapple with the knowledge that her father, and everyone else she lost, will become her private memory.

“I’m going to grieve for the rest of my life” Jacqueline states.

Half of my DNA is my dad. Half of me is dead. I only have one half of me living.

Mourning was not sequential. She was emotionally dominated by a tornado of anger, confusion and acceptance — why did this happen, where does that leave her now and what will she do next? Even after her father passed, loss continued to haunt her. 

Photo by Elinor Franklin

Her aunt, her cousin and her family friend’s mother all lost their lives. A month before her father’s death, her grandma passed, too. Shaking her head, she says, “High school was a blur, I can’t tell you anything that happened.” 

Jacqueline quit her beloved softball, and she began verbally sparring with her mom, both of them dealing with grief and pain. “I didn’t realize how hard it must have been for [my mom] until I actually just spoke it out loud. I couldn’t imagine having to take care of everyone through those moments.” Everyone was picking up the pieces left behind. 

I was just so angry at the world. I was pissed off that people had a normal life with a mom and a dad and they could go to their grandma’s and grandpa’s house. It was just … like everything I wanted I couldn’t have because it’s literally not obtainable.

She went quiet at that time — cutting a lot of people off in anger while dealing with anxiety and depression. “It’s just an anxious tick I now do” she says, picking at her skin and old nail polish while recounting her first panic attack. Her mother went to the grocery store, didn’t return for two hours and wasn’t returning her phone call. “Immediately, my head just went: ‘She died. She got hit by a car and she died. And she’s probably stranded on the road.’” When her mother returned, Jacqueline was on the floor hysterically crying, unable to breathe. “My mom was like, ‘I think you need to go to therapy now.’ I was like, ‘I think I do, too.’” 

Piece by Piece 

Jacqueline loved therapy. After a year of treatment, she had a much better handle on her stress and anxiety. 

I’ve been trying to slow down and breathe … I realize I went through a lot, but at 14, watching [my Dad] go through that, it was normal to me.

At the end of high school, she got involved with the “Natural Helpers” club — a club that anonymously selected students to go on a retreat and help other struggling students. There, she met an advisor named Josephine, whose story paralleled hers. To this day, Jacqueline considers her “a big sister.” 

Photo by James Riccardo & Jenny Lee

“One day, I was having a really bad day in school. I just didn’t want to be there anymore, I was like, ‘what’s the point, everyone is gone.’” She called Josephine, who suggested she come talk to her where she was working, at the Tri CYA. The Tri CYA is a Tri Community and Youth Agency. Jacqueline describes it as “building the community up … specifically, for kids who are at risk of drug use, alcohol use, gangs, failing school or have dropout risk.” It also serves as a place for parents who need extra help looking out for their kids and obtaining other resources. 

As soon as Jaqueline walked in, kids came running up to her. “They’re like, ‘Can we braid your hair?’” she laughs. She mostly worked with the girls, which ranged from talking about feminine hygiene to discussing boy drama and crushes. “I was there pretty much every day, whether it was after softball practice, or after any of my meetings. I went there after my graduation and I took photos with the kids. I was very, very close with them.” 

After she went to college, she continued to volunteer with them for about two years. “It was just a really fun time … they really made me who I am today, and I became more confident.” Between her beloved second grade teacher and the Tri CYA, her experiences led her to becoming a secondary education major in English with a minor in rehabilitation human services. 

Jacqueline hopes to use her degree to become a juvenile counselor, working with young kids in juvie. “I saw a few kids going in and out of the system, or their parents going out of the system. The prison to the school to prison pipeline is huge … I want to be able to change that and to have kids open up to me so I can help them … I feel like I’ve been doing that in student teaching.” 

Like Jacqueline, her dad had a strong sense of community and never forgot where he came from. “I think that’s something that I got from him,” Jacqueline muses. “I work with kids who are at risk. I want to give back the same way he did. I’m his little legacy — me and my brother are.” 

Tossing Roses to the Wind 

Jacqueline tries to take life day by day, but after so much loss, it feels more like hour by hour. “I’ll hear a song and I’m like, ‘My dad … that was his song.’ Or, I’ll see a top that my cousin would wear. It takes you back for a minute.” But she affirms that, “Grief never goes away, but you learn how to make room for more grief or better things to come. I’m going to grieve for the rest of my life — I’m constantly grieving, but you have to keep going. 

She has learned to cope with her reality and finds that with every loss, comes a gain. New members are added to her family, and sometimes they mirror those lost. Her little cousin, Liam John, is named after her father. “There’s a little boy running around with my dad’s name. That just makes me so happy.” She appreciates the path she’s on, and acknowledges that she could have gone down another.

If I really wanted to be mad, I could sit back and be mad … I have the right to. But what does that do for me?

Photo by James Riccardo & Jenny Lee

Instead, she views her life as one where she’s living for 11 people, living fully for every life that has passed. 

There’s beauty in death, too. Although it can feel separating, it has allowed her to form close bonds with others, without hiding herself or her story. “Everyone was always walking on eggshells around us for years. Some of my family won’t talk about my dad — there’s a whole part of my him that I don’t know,” she says, continuing,

A lot of people shut down because they don’t want to talk about the dead, but I think the beauty is getting to know them the way you didn’t get to meet them. I met him as my dad, but I want to know him as someone’s uncle, friend or lover.

When asked about a time that she feels most at peace, Jacqueline replies, “The Fourth of July is my favorite day of the year.” On that day, her family throws a big celebration, and everyone comes together to celebrate and discuss what they’ve lost and gained. She learned to love the day that she most wished had never happened. 

In Jacqueline’s words, “You’re not mourning a death, you’re celebrating a life.” And suddenly, you’re thrust into a vision of her at a funeral with her brother and cousins, throwing roses down into the hole of the earth. There she is — pitching her hand forward, and letting go. 

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