Chapter Three: Morgan Freeman and Timothy Robbins

Learning What the Movie is Really About.

Jeanette loved us — me, Brenda — in a way that was both direct and warm. She was older than us, part of our Cotton Carnival Krewe, and one of those people who could move between irreverence and sincerity without warning. You don’t get many friendships like that in life. They aren’t built quickly. They deepen over years through small ties that start as fun and end as something else entirely.

When she got sick, Brenda was sick too. Their bond — already steady — became something much stronger. They encouraged one another in ways that didn’t need embellishment. They didn’t pretend things were fine. They didn’t collapse into drama either. They simply held each other up, two women with different histories but the same clarity about what mattered and what didn’t.

I watched that bond grow. I watched their calls shift from casual to essential. I watched the trust deepen between them — not through big moments, but through the dozens of small, private ones I wasn’t meant to hear. I didn’t need to. It was enough to know what they were giving to each other.

Jeanette was there for us in ways most people never knew — and in ways I will never forget. How could we know that what befell her after Brenda would take her much sooner.

Before any of that, though, there were the years of laughter. Krewe events. Inside jokes. Her scoldings — which were always half-joking and half-serious, and almost always deserved. She kept me in line more than once, and she enjoyed doing it.

When Brenda and I were King and Queen of the Krewe of Ramet in 2006 and 2007, we had only one choice for Grand Duchess: Jeanette. And she had her own list of requirements, which she delivered without hesitation. She would wear whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted, and attend only the parties she felt like attending. That was the arrangement. And it worked exactly as you’d expect — beautifully.

My favorite memory from that year is the night of our Black Tie and Tennis Shoe Ball. During our “I Shot the Sheriff” skit, her job was simple: walk out and grab the palm tree on cue. She did walk out. She did grab the palm tree. She just did it way before the cue we had written for her.

They are Both Here.

That was Jeanette.

She chose her own dresses, her own timing, her own presence. Nothing about her was scripted, and nothing about her needed to be.

As the years passed, she and Brenda became closer than either of them probably realized at first. They shared something that didn’t need defining. A kind of mutual recognition. A quiet, steadying force between them. When things became difficult for us — when we needed someone who could hear the truth without flinching — Jeanette was there.

And when we later tried to do the same for her, we did it the only way we knew how: honestly. She trusted us. She trusted Brenda especially. I saw that trust in every call they shared.

The last time I saw Jeanette was at a Ramet Christmas party. She gave me one final scolding — softened only slightly by the situation. She told me, in no uncertain terms, to have hope. And she told me to take care of someone.

At the time, I didn’t fully grasp the weight of what she was handing me.
Now I do. Everything is for a reason. There is no random.

When she passed, I wrote her eulogy. I believed I was writing it for her. Maybe I was. But when I look back, I also believe Brenda knew that word was meant for her too, us, everyone — not because she was near death at the time, but because she understood the emotional truth inside. She was there, feeling fine, listening. And I think she knew what I didn’t: I was reading something that, one day, would become ours, We would have it. For a time.

Below is that eulogy — corrected only for grammar, untouched in spirit.
It remains one of the greatest gifts Jeanette ever gave me. That I had to write this and know in that moment to carry on.

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Jeanette’s Eulogy

I will be brief. I am sure you, along with Jeanette, may be seriously doubting that right now.

I fundamentally believe that nothing is perfectly random. I will leave it at that.

Each of us in some way had deep and special bonds with one another. Special bonds between all people are formed over years. Each of you here had something special you shared with Jeanette — whatever it was. We don’t always know the purpose of these special bonds for some time. They are individual, one person to another, and our interactions and reasons for them are different from one relationship to another.

It is kind of like the movie I saw again the other night as I was trying to search for what I would say here today. If you had asked me years ago about my favorite movie of all time, The Shawshank Redemption, I would have probably gone into great detail about each character and what they did and how they came to be where they were — and I would have been wrong.

Maybe some of you, the first time you saw that movie — if you did — got it right from the start. Maybe, like me, we were all slow learners over the years. And as with Jeanette, all of us had deepening ties over time.

If you ask me today what I get from that movie, I can boil it down to one simple theme and one word, because I have seen it over and over again over the years — and the other night — and I see the interaction of Andy and Red now as two people in my life.

Ramet put Jeanette, me, and Brenda together. Over time, in our way, we formed our friendship with Jeanette — first, if you had asked me then, one of irreverence, fun, and frivolity. And for those of you who know me a bit, you can understand I also took an occasional scolding from Jeanette telling me, mostly, to behave myself.

On first viewing of the Jeanette story, if you had asked me then, I would have said, “Man, she is cool,” added a few stories, and closed with “feisty… funny.”

Over the years, Brenda and I came to know her charm and wit and straight-to-the-punch approach to telling it like it is. And when Brenda and I were to be the King and Queen of the Krewe of Ramet, we had only one first thought:

Jeanette Williams will be our Grand Duchess.

And she had her first thoughts. She quickly told us that her requirements were that she would wear what she wanted, when she wanted, and go to whatever party she felt like — and that was the way it was going to be. We knew we were going to have fun. We had fun. She chose her parties and her dresses perfectly.

My most vivid memory of Jeanette at that time was the night of our Black Tie and Tennis Shoe Ball and our “I Shot the Sheriff” skit. She had but one main task: go out and get the palm tree at the end of the skit.

Right off cue, and not at the scripted moment we presumed to write for her, she went out and got the palm tree. She picked her own damn dress and came to the parties she wanted to come to. She picked the moment to go get that palm tree — not our scripted moment.

Ramet brought us together with Jeanette, and that year solidified our candor with one another — mostly fun and frivolity and good things — and deepened our conversations in many ways. It also brought Jeanette and Brenda more closely together.

As the next years moved by us, she and my wife would come to share a special bond and gain a closeness that is very difficult to describe.

Jeanette reached out to us more and more a couple of years back when we needed an ear and a friend. Yes, we had our fun parties and fun times along the way then, but conversations were sometimes much more direct about circumstances and things. These two people in my life forged a deeper bond in the face of life’s adversity. And Jeanette was there for us — more than you know — in deep trust.

In time, we gave our friend what we could of what we believed and what we had learned before her, to help her — an ear, a sounding board, an advocate. And truth be told, I mostly observed the friendship between Jeanette and Brenda as it evolved — many calls and many talks, with deep trust.

I saw Jeanette at the recent Ramet Christmas party, and she gave me my last scolding that I need to paraphrase just a bit.

She told me then to have hope, and she told me to take care of someone.

If you ask me to describe my favorite movie of all time today, it perfectly parallels what I have now come to know as the meaning of Jeanette for me:

Two friends come together through circumstance. They do have fun and enjoy good times together. But in adversity, they learn one another’s deepest beliefs, and through each of their life’s paths, they give to one another, in due course…

Hope.