"Goodbyes"

It's with a heavy heart that I write this today. Jenny passed away on March 13th, this past Thursday. She went peacefully with my sisters Amy and Lesa and my mom beside her, in the early afternoon. It just happened to be the day my sisters usually came to help with her care.

Now family is gathering and we feel such joy in that. Now is the time that we are mourning her but also celebrating her life. What better way to do that than by being together? She would have loved that. We feel her everywhere around us, especially in the laughter. It helps to heal some of the pain.

As we are getting ready for the funeral we are all contemplating memories and trying to make sense of it all. We are getting ready for the day we say our final good-byes. Lots of planning, practicing songs, making videos, and writing talks. Tomorrow night is the viewing and the following day is the funeral. We are busy, and that helps ease the pain. When we all go home our perspectives will be different, but for now we are basking in each other's company and comfort.

Jenny's best friend from high school wrote the following. My family has gotten much peace from this in the last couple of days. And today as I'm thinking what might be best to post I believe this is ideal. We feel Jennie (same names different spellings) may have known her better than any of us did and her words sum up much of what we feel:

As I was driving over the Mason Street Bridge today I saw the first set of fresh water pelicans flying in return to the Fox River; the first sign that spring is here. Sometimes signs are obvious and sometimes they take a little more time to notice. I was crying as I drove over that bridge today because my beloved friend has passed and the pain I feel resonates so strongly inside of me. No matter how much time you have to say goodbye to someone you love, you can’t help feeling like you’ve just had the wind knocked out of you. I drove around a lot today, thinking about Jen and all of the time between us. And then I thought about the last time we ever saw each other; I was dropping her off at an airport in Chicago so she could fly back home to Utah. We told each other we’d “see ya later” and I can vividly picture her leaving my car and closing the door. My first thought was “That CAN’T be the last time I saw her!” I thought about how awful that was, to have a drop off at the airport be the last time you see your best friend. But then it dawned on me; as clear as those pelicans flying over the bridge were a sign of spring’s arrival, dropping Jen off was also a sign. For those who didn’t know the two of us in high school, I wasn’t allowed to have either a license or a car so Jen was always the one to pick me up and drop me off. We would spend hours just driving around the back roads; talking about politics or movies or any old thing. Jen was always at the wheel. But now, this last time we were together, I was the one at the wheel. Come to think of it, I can’t remember another time when I was the one driving. Our time as friends on this earth has come to an end; a door, even if it’s a car door at an airport, has closed.

I first met Jen in the Mrs. Stettler’s journalism class at Weber High school; she was the girl cracking all the jokes and I was the one laughing loudly from the back row.
I had lots of friends, but had never met anyone like Jen. She was an incredibly funny girl with a matchless wit and a pirate smile. For all her shouts and charisma, she was at the same time a humble and devoutly spiritual child of God. She was emboldened by her faith and made strong in her trust of our Heavenly Father’s will for her. She once said to me that she feared sometimes people misunderstood her humor as an attribute to a dark personality, but that simply wasn’t so. Jen’s life was a light by which mine and everyone’s around her was made brighter. She was my best friend and if I had never met her, than I think I would have made her up for the sheer wishing to have found a kindred spirit like hers.

I am forever moved by her humor and her grace. I want so much to share with everyone what my time with her was like because it bears importance; because it was a time in our youth when so much of our young personalities and character were created and shaped. Without her presence in my life there would be a huge part of myself that I never would have known and without her friendship I don’t know where I would have ended up. Jen always believed in me; she celebrated my triumphs, she listened to my woes and she championed my spirit when I swore I simply wasn’t going to make it. No matter the latest boyfriend or bad grade, a night of watching movies, drinking root beer floats and singing along to Barbara Streisand made the whole world right again. Anyone who knew her, knew there just wasn’t anyone else like her; When she made me mix tapes they had titles like “You’ll Hate This and It’s Okay” and when she went on vacation she sent post cards to my cat. Jen always did the things that made her happy, no matter what those things were; we could spend one afternoon visiting antique shops and farmer’s market, the next at an all day concert in a mosh pit and the day after that flying kites and eating old Easter candy. As I mentioned before, out of the two of us, Jen was the one with a car and a license so a lot of our time was just spent driving around with her at the wheel, the two of us listening to music and talking. Even in the years after high school, with husbands and babies and mortgages between us, we never lost the words that carried us into hours of conversations. Jen was so incredibly smart – If there was a subject I didn’t know anything about, I needed to only ask her about it. The economic structure of third world nations, the political ramifications of having an electoral college, the inner musical workings of a Neil Diamond album, you name it, she could give you an education on it and often have you laughing in between bullet points.

The first time anyone met Jen she was cracking a joke. You either got it or you didn’t and if you didn’t, well then, she would just try harder the next time. Her humor was so great that it almost preceded her presence. I’ve never laughed as heartily as I did with Jen. There was a time in our early friendship when the jokes between us morphed into almost a second language and if you weren’t paying attention it was easy to get confused. For anyone who didn’t know the name “Sultra” in reference to Jen, well that’s just a pity. I’ll let you in on a little secret, in case you didn’t already know the origins of the name. The summer before my senior year of high school, Jen and her family graciously allowed me to accompany them on their annual trip aboard a houseboat in Lake Powell. One hot Lake Powell afternoon Jen and I took one of her niece Ariel’s dolls and hid it. Well, maybe we hid it or maybe we tied it up to a window curtain, but whatever the case, Ariel was pretty upset with us. To make it up to her we then engaged in playing a game with dolls and when we asked Ariel the name of that particular doll we had taken, Ariel, with a deadpan look on her face said simply, “Sultra”. Perhaps it was the summer heat or the giddiness of afternoon, but Jen and I just cracked up. From that time on “Sultra” was the watchword. If we were ordering a pizza, “Sultra” was the name of the person placing the order. If someone had gotten out of hand somewhere, “Sultra” was the scapegoat. Inevitably and in my absence, Jen achieved ownership of the name and it became her alter ego. “Sultra” will forever be a sacred word to me.

Before I knew that Jen had died, I spent a lot of time going through old journals and yearbooks. I have a lot Jen’s poetry, as she often shared her writings with me. Jen cherished words; she was never one to throw away a compliment and she was never wasteful with the sentiments she chose to describe the people and the things she loved best. Jen loved her family; she loved growing up in a full house of family on Higley Road. She loved to tell me about how her father was a farmer and the time she spent helping him harvest sugar beets. She loved to tell me about the adventures she had with her sisters and brother. She loved sunsets, but especially the ones seen from her own yard. Jen was entirely grateful for the life she loved to write about; she was always inspired by those around her. As I look back now on her poetry and even the words she wrote in my yearbook, I realized that with Jen it was grace everyday. Not many high school seniors would quote Abraham Lincoln in their best friend’s yearbook, but Jen did. The year she graduated high school she wrote this in my yearbook: “You’ve been a great friend and I really appreciate your love. Abraham Lincoln once said ‘ The good thing about the future is that it only comes one day at a time.’ That way it isn’t so hard to say goodbye.” There was of course a passage about us trying to go see Oingo Boingo that summer in concert as well, but the point of it was, that Jen was always extraordinary, even as a girl. And now I have a mountain of grace to remember her by; in old letters and post cards, poems and passages on the backs of photos. I have a mountain of grace to help ease the mountain of pain inside of me.

There is a photo in with all of these great letters taken one afternoon in late spring the same year that Jen graduated. It’s of a “No Trespassing” sign in front of field and in that field is a bramble of wild yellow roses. I had come home that afternoon and answered a phone call from a very excited Jen telling me she was on her way over to pick me up because she had to show me something. Once in her car we drove for about ten minutes and out onto some back road that only Jen would have known. Suddenly it was upon us; a giant stretch of wild yellow roses just off the side of the road. It was like a miracle; wild and growing quite out of the ordinary in a place you’d never thought to look. We jumped out of the car and ran toward it slowing down only to carefully creep in as deep as we could into the bramble. It was magic. Jen made me pose for a picture smelling one of the roses, but other than that we didn’t speak. The rose bushes grew as tall as ourselves and we felt entirely surrounded in God’s beauty. That afternoon was a gift, but the greater gift was knowing that I had a friend who not only appreciated something like that, but was kind enough to share it with me.

Jen and I talked about our future as much as we talked about our present. We even, as girls in high school, talked about the children we might one day have. Jen told me once that she believed her children were already watching her; that they were witnesses to the life she was living. The first time I saw her daughter Erin I couldn’t believe how much she looked like Jen and I found myself thinking, “Yes. This child knew you.” Jen loved being a mother and in talking about our kids, her two daughters and my son, we bonded all over again. Jen always knew she wanted to be a mother and God blessed her with two amazing little girls. When I look at pictures of Erin and Phoenix, I see their mother’s heart and the slightest hint of that same pirate smile. Jen’s girls will always know love; as they grow up in the sight and arms of their father and all of Jen’s family, they will know the same love that Jen knew as a child and thus know how much their own mother loves them. They will watch the sun set in the same space that Jen did; they will have Jen’s love of scrap booking to show them pictures of a life lived in grace and they will amaze all of us as without even knowing it, as they continue to remind us of our unique and beloved Jenny.

Spring is returning to the earth and with each day of growing warmth, our sorrow and our grief will wane. Spring reminds us of the promise of new life; it’s all around us now. It reminds us of the new life that is eternal; a promise that Jen knew in her heart to be true. It was a promise she held fast to as she entered into a Mission to Germany; It was a promise she held fast to as she entered into the holy Temple marriage to the love of her life, Ernie and it was a promise she held fast to each day she spent with her precious girls. Jen’s spirit was boundless. For every challenge she ever faced, she only came back stronger. She pointed out the humor in everything; even when she was weakened by medications and another surgery this past November, she called me from her hospital bed to “try out new comedy material” about her current hospital stay. She was utterly exhausted and yet propelled to get a laugh out of me. Those phone calls meant the world to me. Even when we weren’t together I could hear in my head the joke she would have made or the punch line she would have delivered perfectly; I walk through this life with her laughter, her humor, her comedic intervention. I walk through this life, not burdened with the memory of grief, but with a soul made lighter with the memory of whimsy and devotion. I walk through this life and into this spring, a better woman and a better person because I had a friend named Jen.

by Jen Schwenk