By Trace Salzbrenner — [email protected]
Jimmy McIntosh was hard to wake up in the morning. His parents remember the noisy alarms he’d set, which woke everyone but him.
A friend, Suhani Khandelwal, said that if you knew Jimmy, you knew he had a problem getting to school on time.
“Every day he would walk in late, never without his trenta blackberry sage lemonade refresher from Starbucks,” she said.
But, Suhani said, during their junior year together, Jimmy volunteered to drive her to school every day — even on Wednesdays when she had to be there early. They (almost) always arrived on time that year, and Jimmy would even sometimes forgo his signature drink to make it happen.
“His kindness wasn’t revealed through grand gestures,” Suhani said, “but through his small actions showing how much he cared.”
She shared these memories of Jimmy on Monday afternoon with a church full of family, friends, and neighbors gathered to remember the Concord-Carlisle High School senior, who died in an April 21 highway accident along with classmates Maisey O’Donnell, 18, and Hannah Wasserman, 17.
Protective and kind
Jimmy’s funeral was held at First Religious Society, a small, white church in Carlisle, with additional seating at Carlisle Public School, which Jimmy had attended, right across the street. Blue, yellow, pink, and white flowers adorned the pulpit where family and friends spoke.
Those flowers framed friend Tess Marken as she spoke about Jimmy’s care for others.
“I often say, ‘You were like our dad, always protecting us and caring for us. You made us feel safe,’” Tess said.
She remembered car rides when Jimmy would talk her ear off with the most “expressive and captivating stories” — and how he would keep her and their other friends in check.
“The morals you instilled will forever stay. I’ll always hear you in my ear: ‘Tess, let’s think about this,’” she said.
Rev. Susan Suchocki Brown said Jimmy was a part of the Mentors in Violence Prevention, which seemed to her a logical fit after she learned about him from his parents and grandparents.
“He was a natural person who was going to protect the most vulnerable of people,” Brown said. “He stood up for his friends and everyone else as a protector, as a mediator, as somebody who would have your back.”
Jimmy’s cousin William McCabe spoke of how this caring nature extended to his parents, Liz and Scott.
“He really just loved his dad,” William said. “[His mom] truly was his best friend. He loved and protected my aunt always. It was a bond like I’ve never seen.”
‘Loved by so many’
Mourners held prayer cards with a photo of Jimmy on one side and a poem by Helen Lowrie Marshall on the other. It began, “I’d like the memory of me to be a happy one.”
Britney Rackley, another of Jimmy’s cousins, looked back to when, at age 11, she was interviewed for her school newspaper. Asked what she was most excited about that year, Britney “proudly reported” it was the upcoming birth of her cousin Jimmy.
The two “were like peas and carrots from day one,” she said.
“I loved reading books with him. I loved snuggling and watching ‘The Princess and the Frog’ … and even having to pry him off of my leg when I left the house,” Rackley remembered. “I loved watching him grow into such a wonderful young man. Jimmy was compassionate, hardworking, bright, and a role model for others around him.
“I know that Jimmy was and is loved by so many people. I once heard a quote that grief is an expression of all of the love that we did not get to give the person we lost,” she said.
“I have so much love for Jimmy, and I know that I will continue to remember Jimmy with great love.”
‘Never truly lost’
Mourners filled the church, and many others watched the livestream in the Carlisle school auditorium to remember the young man who loved technology, art, math, and pottery. Even some who helped direct funeral traffic stepped inside to hear parts of the remembrance.
Brown concluded the service by reminding the grieving that memories can keep loved ones close even when they’re gone.
“A loved one is never truly lost. They still laugh and work and play, because we remember them that way,” she said. “Love cannot be lost.”
