Neko Diane Kincaid

Neko Diane Kincaid

Devoted Wife and Mother

July 23rd, 1976 to August 19th, 2016

You Will Be Deeply Missed

Neko was not just my better half; she was greater in every way. For nine years, she was more than my wife; she was my confidant, my partner in our every endeavor, and my best friend. Although she was taken from us far too soon, I am far the better for having known her for even the relatively short time we had together. So, I would like to take the time to share her story with you as I know it to celebrate both Neko’s life and her many worthy accomplishments. Please bear with me for some of you may find it emotional and lengthy, but it is the proper time and place for such sentiment and I knew her best. Writing this has been cathartic for me and has helped me cope with my grief over such a soul crushing loss. Furthermore, I intend this to remain as a living document to record everything I can remember about Neko for our children’s sake.

In preparing for her memorial, I learned a few unpleasant facts. Three years ago, I purchased a higher end digital camera for Neko for her birthday. By the time she fell ill, she had taken nearly 1700 photographs and she’s not in a single one of them. In fact, I could count the number of photographs of her over the past three years on my fingers and likely with fingers to spare. I don’t think it would have bothered her much, but it disturbs me greatly. In searching through nine years of photos and videos for this service, I experienced her loss over and over again.

Neko was like a shooting star. Her light enriched everyone fortunate enough to know her, but her spark was extinguished before she could see all of her life’s ambitions to fruition. For my part, when we met I was a 39-year-old little boy. I had walked away from my previous marriage so I had no furniture, I had never owned a home since the housing bubble priced me out just when I achieved the earning potential that should have permitted me to purchase a home. I was living a Spartan life at my military unit in preparation for mobilization for Iraq, and I had very little money due to my impending divorce that would eventually cost me more than $65,000 in alimony and lawyer fees. All I really had was a good career and a lot of “potential;” nothing to brag about for someone at that age.

Yet for some reason, Neko fell in love with me at first sight. She was cautious nevertheless and tested me in a number of ways to be certain I would live up to her endearment; she was not the gullible type. I had had relationships with controlling, entitled, and selfish women, but none who loved me so deeply as Neko. After only nine years with her, we had three amazing children together, I now own two homes worth a combined $1.4 million with a considerable amount of equity and I have a substantial sum of money in the bank as well as a decent sized home full of nice furnishings. In contrast, Neko had accomplished many if not all of the same achievements in her twenties; I was well on the slow side compared to her. Without Neko coming into my life to straighten me out, I have no doubt I’d have remained the same fool I had always been.

I find it difficult to comprehend why Neko would be the one chosen from among us to return to God’s Grace so early, for her life had already been a tragic one. Early on, I realized the stories she told me about her life did not make sense and it took me over a year to get her to fully open up and reveal to me what I’m about to tell you. Some of what I will tell you, I have only just learned after her death from going through her personal effects. Neko was the only child of a Korean father and an Okinawan Japanese mother. In fact, her mother was just a toddler when US forces invaded Okinawa the day after Easter in 1945. Her maternal grandfather had been impressed as forced labor for the Japanese defense preparations while her maternal grandfather held the family together and survived. Only weeks later, my maternal grandfather was flying missions out of Okinawa as the pilot an A26 Invader Medium Bomber with the 13th Bomb Group until the end of the war.

Her father was an unemployed, unrepentant alcoholic and womanizer so Neko was largely neglected while her mother worked full time. Her maternal grandmother once forced her mother to care for Neko until her death when Neko’s mother then allowed her to be adopted by a sister – in – law and she was taken to the US at the age of six years old. The post-World War II animosity between the two nationalities of her family resulted in Neko being passed around between her Korean relatives and routinely mistreated, even savagely beaten and hospitalized on more than one occasion for the most trivial of offenses like getting better grades than her aunt’s children. On one occasion when she was around twelve years old, she was locked outside the house without clothes so she was forced to seek help from a neighbor completely naked. She was valued only for the free labor and housework she performed and said she had to steal underwear and clothing from her relatives to wear to school. Some of Neko’s high school teachers had their suspicions and assisted her with completing her studies early and in obtaining a Tennis scholarship to California State University, Fresno. She had finally escaped her family’s torment.

Though Neko had demonstrated great strength all along, this is the point in her life where she showed the stuff she was really made of. Instead of using her past as an excuse to become a loser, she tempered her negative experiences into the raw determination to be the best she could be; her character was impeccable. Always prone to be on the thick side physically, she took up weight lifting and transformed herself into 115 pounds of lean muscle; the stunning young woman I would be so fortunate to meet years later. Although she struggled with her studies since English was her third language, Neko graduated college at the age of 18 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration with Minors in both International Business and Marketing from California State University, Fresno. In 1997, she appeared in the International edition of Who’s Who of Entrepreneurs. She later graduated with honors from Pacific States University with a Master’s in Business Administration with a Grade Point Average of 3.73 in only 18 months while she simultaneously worked full time. By the age of 24, she was already earning $140,000 a year as a sales and marketing executive for Warner Brothers.

Neko was also once “discovered” by a Playboy photographer while enjoying a trip to Las Vegas with her friends. Young and flattered, she did the photo shoot, but immediately regretted it. She went to court to get possession of the photos to prevent their release and explained: “I realized how could I ever be taken seriously as a business woman if I went through with something like that?” Despite her many successes, she felt profoundly unfulfilled in her life. She was deeply committed to starting a family of her own and, like me, her first marriage dissolved largely as a result of its failure to produce children albeit for different reasons. She too walked away from her first marriage leaving virtually everything she owned behind in Turkey to start over. Neko and I first met in Los Angeles in 2007 as I was preparing for mobilization to Iraq only a few months after she had returned to the US from living and working in Turkey where she had also learned to speak Turkish in addition to the Japanese, Korean, and English she already knew. She was an irresistibly beautiful woman and being a bit of a cad at the time, I was smugly confident we had made a connection. So, imagine my bewilderment when Neko refused to return any of my phone calls.

Then, out of the blue, she called me back several weeks later. Neko told me she wasn’t interested in starting something with someone who was going off to war and she had thrown away my number, but she couldn’t stop thinking about me and recovered my number from her phone records. On another phone call, Neko was giving me a hard time over something quite personal she wanted me to do for her. I told her I thought she was amazing, but I didn’t need to take that from her and promptly hung up on her. She called me back and sheepishly apologized. Later on, she told me I was the only guy who’d ever stood up to her and I had demonstrated to her I would be her equal. In a subsequent conversation, she broke down on the phone and told me she was tired of feeling lonely and felt she deserved to be happy. My smugness returned, but only till our first lunch date a few hours later on the following day.

Angry with herself for losing her composure on the phone, Neko resolved to immediately regain the initiative in our budding romance. I was therefore subjected to the most intense grilling I had ever experienced before or since and, frankly, that only my years of intense training as a Green Beret had allowed me to survive. She explained she was not at all interested in a superficial dating relationship. She wanted something real that would culminate in nothing less than marriage and a family. Furthermore, Neko let me know if I ever played her, disrespected her, or toyed with her in any way then I could go ahead and do unpleasant things to myself. I lost my appetite for my lunch.

I can’t say I was smitten after that experience, but I was certainly head over heels for Neko after our next date. This presented a problem as I mentioned I was somewhat of a scoundrel at the time and I had a couple other romantic entanglements to divest myself of and hopefully without losing her. I was found out anyway and she patiently, but sternly permitted me to immediately pare my love life down to her and her alone. Overnight, her apartment was “our” apartment and she made space in her closet and elsewhere for my things. One night early on, she had washed some of my laundry for me and used it as an excuse to show me where to put my clothes in the closet. I took the neatly stacked laundry from her and simply stuck it on a shelf. The look on Neko’s face told me I had just blasphemed in some way and she said “No,” then broke down the clothes by color and type. She also went out on her own initiative and bought me a new wardrobe from Abercrombie and Fitch that all fit perfectly and also let me know what a unique fixer upper opportunity she viewed me as. Everything she did was absolutely first class. She taught me the good stuff was more expensive, but it looked better and lasted longer and she was right. Her rule of thumb applied equally to things like bedding and furniture as well as premium gasoline to take better care of your car.

For the most part, though, once I had withstood her initial trial at lunch, though, Neko wrapped her whole heart around me for good, but additional subtle tests followed. She took me with her to her favorite Gold’s Gym and running stairs to confirm I was in shape. Being a water baby, she took me to the pool to ensure I could swim; thank you Special Forces Combat Diver Qualification Course I successfully completed the previous summer. She surprised me by taking me to a restaurant I never even knew existed called “Kincaid’s,” spelled exactly the same as my name and was located only walking distance away from our apartment on the pier in Redondo Beach. On more than one occasion, the staff seemed to believe I was a member of the namesake family once they saw my name on my credit card. One intrepid server even inquired about employment opportunities at the corporate level once she completed her business degree. Neko and I clicked together in a way I have never known and we continued to grow as a couple day by day.

We spent every free moment together during my ramp up for Iraq and Neko started to sleep the night through as opposed to the troubled sleep she’d always known previously; she finally felt safe with me. We planned a trip to Maui during my block leave, which remains the singularly greatest time of my life. One day, she told me I would be taking care of the rental car as well as all the day to day travel expenses. Confused, I told her I thought we’d talked about splitting most of it? Disgusted, Neko explained she’d sold her oil stock to pay for the condo and maybe the air fare too, I no longer recall, and it was only fair I take care of everything else. I agreed. I also learned I needed to bone up on my ability to read her mind and that she was much further along in our trip planning than I was. My only other contribution was in ensuring we truly had a relaxing vacation by limiting the planned activities to one every other day to maximize our bum around together time, which she agreed to without hesitation. We saw a play and went SCUBA diving, but we had the most fun riding bikes down the Haleakala volcano.

It sounds far more mundane than it was. However, Neko wanted to race me down the mountain so we took the descent at break neck speeds on a pair of rickety rental bikes. I outweighed Neko by a solid seventy pounds so it wasn’t much of a race; I didn’t even need to pedal and gravity always pulled me to the finish line to her great frustration. To keep things interesting, we had several drinks with lunch halfway down the mountain then topped those off with margaritas a little further down. After surviving the ride by some miracle, we went for a swim at the beach at the base of the volcano. Instead of moving right or left to avoid a coral reef, we elected to go over it. I made it minus one toe nail then sobered up watching the surf knock Neko around the reef. I rode a wave back onto the reef and got her safely to shore. It was an awesome day although I always wondered what the lifeguards thought of the two idiotic tourists trying to swim over that reef. We shared many other adventures and returned to Los Angeles completely exhausted despite our efforts to the contrary.

Neko alone looked out for my wellbeing while I did my tour in Iraq, routinely mailed me things, and maintained constant contact with my family. When I sent her a picture of a burning oil well, she uncannily deduced I was fighting in the 2nd Battle for Basra during the Shia Uprising in the spring of 2008. I never got away with much. On another occasion, I was speaking with her on a satellite phone when a rocket landed less than 200 yards away and when I clumsily tried to play it off, she responded with a curt expletive then said: “That was a bomb!” Neko flew out to join me when we redeployed back to Fort Campbell where she finally opened up to me about her childhood; she told me I was the first person she’d ever confided in. I proposed to her at the edge of the Cumberland River in Clarksville, Tennessee. When I finished my prepared proposal, she responded “What?” I said: “What do you mean, ‘What?’ I just proposed to you and you didn’t hear any of it?” She said she blacked out for a moment and asked me to repeat it. Now completely flustered, I just blurted out: “Will you marry me?” and that time she accepted.

Before we’d even picked out her engagement ring, she bought me a Rolex Submariner watch. Neko thought it was unfair guys shelled out for an expensive ring and got nothing in return. A few months later, we found the ring she wanted in a boutique named “Parisien” in downtown Los Angeles’s jewelry district. It was owned by two obviously foreign born brothers and we got 110% from both of them as we were their only customers. The ring was a platinum setting with a high quality 1 ½ carat center stone with another carat’s worth of smaller stones all around the center stone. Retail was $19,000 dollars and I didn’t care; if that’s what she wanted she was going to get it. However, at one point the two brothers spoke to each other in a language I had never heard before and Neko immediately interjected in the same language; it was Turkish. They were visibly shocked to hear their native language from an Asian woman. She explained how she came to learn it then she went to work on them. In a very short time, she had haggled them down to $10,000 and asked them: “In this economy, who’s going to give you $10,000 in cash?” They responded together: “Nobody.” Neko had just saved me nearly 50% or $9,000 on her ring I was going to buy regardless of cost.

All the while, we refined our plans for the future to include a vacation in Wine Country, California, upon my return home. It was there we discovered we were pregnant or I should say “suspected” because Neko was still not totally convinced even after four positive Early Pregnancy Tests (at $15 apiece I might add). We moved to Oahu for my staff assignment to PACOM and bought our first home together where we welcomed our first child, Isabel, in 2009. As an only child, Neko knew nothing about motherhood, but she read extensively on the subject and worked tirelessly to acquire the skill set. Because of her previous experience in trying to start a family, she was under the false impression it was difficult for her to conceive and that Isabel had been a miracle. That belief was proven mistaken when barely two months later we learned we were already expecting Madeline. In early 2010, I made the drive from Ewa Beach to Tripler Army Medical Center in only 15 minutes all along fearing I might have to perform delivery on the side of the freeway when her contractions started coming every two minutes. After a labor of less than two hours, Maddy burst into the world before anesthesia could be administered and before Isabel’s babysitter could arrive so she too witnessed the birth of her sister only 11 months and one week after her own.

Neko then had two daughters in diapers well before she had mastered motherhood; a one-year-old and a one month old. When I went back to work after completing my leave, I returned home one night and opened the back door just in time to witness a diaper drop from the second floor into the entryway hallway to join another half dozen or so used diapers already there. Both girls were crying and I could hear Neko running around with her hair on fire. I got out of my combat boots and ran upstairs, gathered both girls in my arms on our bed and calmed them down. Neko had an almost feral look in her eyes so I told her “I got it, I’ll put them down so go take a bath, eat, or have a drink.” She certainly had no example to follow from her own childhood and had no previous child care experience. Nevertheless, she never gave up, read extensively, and through trial and error became a self-taught Mom and a damn good one at that. She maintained an immaculate home and learned how to cook too.

Oahu was followed by nearly four years in Korea where Little Mikey joined our family in early 2013. There, Neko also found an amazing private preschool we credited with helping us instill a love of learning into both Isabel and Madeline, which led to both girls getting selected for the gifted student education program once we returned to the States. We bought a country home and the girls were in a good school and doing well. For a time, we were very happy and content until this great tragedy befell us.

Neko was the family. I brought in a paycheck and helped out, but she was its heart and soul. Neko stopped cleaning, shopping, cooking, and caring for us only to sleep and she did very little of that for these little ones require attention around the clock. I do not yet know what the future looks like, but I do understand I have impossible shoes to fill. She loved me in a way and more intensely than I have ever known and that was occasionally difficult for me to live up to. It was those times I invoked her wrath, which, ironically, I found every bit as intense as her love; sort of like a experiencing a solar flare.

Isabel, Madeline, and Mikey: know that however great your Mother’s love was for me, she made no secret of the fact she would kick me to the curb without hesitation if I ever dared become an obstacle to your development. Her love for you three was infinite. It was what drove her untiring work ethic and her determination to ensure you never lacked anything. Some of you here today witnessed how seriously she took her role as a wife, mother, and homemaker. She was driven like she felt a Karmic obligation to make up for her childhood through you three. It makes no sense to me as Neko certainly shouldn’t have felt any responsibility for what the adults in her life did to her as child, but through the three of you I know she has changed the world for the better.

So while I am overwhelmed by sadness and grief at our loss, I know Neko will remain with me in our continued success, in our children’s laughter and smiles, as well as in our hearts and memories. I suffer from a big hole in my heart I hope will lessen or even heal one day, but I am also left with an even greater sense of purpose to finish what we started. Neko, I love you still and always. You know I can’t be with you now, Momma, but one day I will rejoin you. Until then, I will miss you so.