A Service for Jennifer
What Ken Said...

I


Love


You

Thanks for coming. I'm not much of a public speaker. Jennifer was the speaker, not me. So I've got my sides with me, as they say in the trade. My name is Ken Stringer, if there's anyone here who doesn't know, and I'm Jennifer's husband. Jennifer always used her own last name instead of mine. You see, she'd already changed one name, her first. She was actually born Susan Jensen, but people called her Jenny sometimes, so she decided to make it official and changed it to Jennifer. Jennifer Jensen...she liked the sound of it. And I got used to being called Mr. Jensen on occasion.

I know there's a number of you here who didn't really know Jennifer at all, or only a little, and are here mainly to support me. I hope you know how much I appreciate it. Then there's a group of friends who know Jennifer very well in nearly all, if not all, her aspects. And of course, there's all those graduations in between. Jennifer's parents are gone and she had no brothers or sisters. The family she does have left are all at least several hundred miles away. But there is my family, there's Jennifer's colleagues in the nutrition community, and there's her clients who came to her, or read her articles, for nutritional counsel and warm hugs. Actually, many of her colleagues and her clients became her friends, because that's the way she was. She was not able, and did not want, to keep that professionally emotional distance. That just wasn't her. And I want to say to those of you who are her clients, she had a truly special place in her heart for you. Jennifer had a lot of physical pain in her life, and I think that's why she empathized so much with others who were suffering. You were her main reason for being. She used to tell me it was me, but I think it was you guys just as much. And then there's one more group. A group who could not be here in body today for one reason or another, but are here in spirit. Jennifer, of course, belongs to that last group. But whatever group you belong to, I thank you all very much for being here.

There is one question I would like to put aside, at least for today. It's a natural question to ask: What caused Jennifer's death? I don't mind people asking me, but the truth is, I don't yet know and the doctors don't yet know. There may be more of an answer in a couple of weeks, but that is not what today is about. This service is about her life and what she chose to do with it. I will leave it to others to touch on some of her accomplishments. For myself, I'm just going to tell a little bit about what Jennifer meant to me. It's very personal and I'm the type of guy who is usually very private about his personal life. Jennifer, on the other hand, was very open about hers. Often to my intense embarrassment. But for today, at least, I'm going to try to put aside my reserve, because I want you to know how much I love her.

When I was first getting to know Jennifer, and we would be riding in the car with the radio on, she would sometimes lapse into song. And then she'd catch herself and stop, because Jennifer could not sing on key to save her life. But I always encouraged her to sing, because it was clear how happy it made her feel. So singing became quite a thing with her when we were alone together. Lately, one of the songs she liked to sing was that last song we played, "Oh What a Beautiful Morning". Jennifer had more energy in the morning than anyone I ever knew. She would utterly crash at night, but in the morning she was usually annoyingly chipper. Recently, she took to playing this silly little Knock, Knock game. You know, "Knock, knock." "Who's there?" "Oh." "Oh, who?" "Oh what a beautiful morning," she would sing, often goading me into singing it right along with her. So when she was in the hospital, I would take a little CD player, put the earphones on my head so I could follow the words, and sing that song to her, hoping she could hear me, because most of the time she was in there, she was in a coma. So that's why I played it today; I'm still hoping she can hear it.

I was married once before Jennifer. Then I was divorced and single for about eight years. It was a major turning point in my life. I changed careers completely, and career became the focus of my life. But I was often achingly lonely. Every once in a while I would go to this dance club in the Marina near where I lived. Jennifer would always embarrass me later by telling people we met in a bar. It was a dance club, I would hasten to add, not a bar. It's a Kinko's now, so I suppose I could tell people we met in a Kinko's, but it was called Popcorn’s then. Big place, three stories, three dance floors. So one Friday night in May, 1985, I went there, feeling kinda lonely. I think I was there a couple hours, didn't ask a single woman to dance, didn't speak to anyone. I was, and I guess still am, pretty shy around women. But then this tall, blond woman caught my eye. She was sitting at a table with five or six girlfriends, talking very animatedly. I think it was the fact that she seemed to be having so much fun that attracted me as much as anything. Finally, I mustered up enough courage to ask her to dance. I remember "La Bamba" was the song. She said Sure, and we danced.

Now at the end of the song in a situation like that, there is always this awkward moment. Will she just say thank you and go her own way, or can you somehow manage to stick with her? Before I could say anything, she asked me if I wanted to come meet a bunch of crazy girls and she grabbed my hand and pulled me over to their table before I could even say, OK. It turned out they were all there together celebrating their last final in the Public Health Department at UCLA. They were all budding nutritionists in the masters degree program. I ended up spending the entire evening at their table. And Jennifer kept trying to maneuver it so that I was sitting next to one of her girlfriends. I finally realized she was trying to play matchmaker, because, as it also turned out, she was married. And happily, she claimed. Now, for those of you know me, you know that going out with a married woman is one of the last things I would ever consider doing. And I wasn't really considering doing it then either. But for that night, I just wanted to be with her. I kept sitting next to her, dancing with her. She had a life in her and I wanted to be near it. And for that night, for that purpose, it didn't matter that she was married.

Finally, when the club was closing, I walked the whole group to their car. I said goodnight to Jennifer, it was all very proper. And then an instinct told me to pull a business card out of my wallet and give it to her. And I told her that I wasn't going to ask for her number; I had no intention of trying to interfere in someone's marriage. But I wanted her to have my number in case, I told her, anything ever changed in her life. Because in my mind, I knew somehow that I had found "the one", and I didn't know exactly how the Universe was going to work it out, but I had the strongest sense that it would. She politely took the card. Months later, she told me she simply threw it away.

Now one of the things that happened the next day was that I had just bought a new John Denver album. I'd always loved his music and the first cut on this record was the title track called "Dreamland Express". I played it over and over because the lyrics seemed to express just the way I was feeling about the night before. I was suddenly in love with a woman who was married and who I could have no reasonable expectation of ever seeing again.

A couple weeks went by. No phone call. I don't know that I expected one, but I was hoping. Then it was June 6, the anniversary of D Day. I remember she had told me that that was her birthday. It was another Friday or Saturday night and I had the thought that maybe she'd be at Popcorns again celebrating with her girlfriends. So I went in hopes of finding her. I looked all over, didn't dance with a soul, I was only interested in finding her. But no Jennifer. It was a stupid idea, I finally decided, and I started to leave. Then I spotted one her girlfriends from the time before. But she was alone. None of the others, including Jennifer, was there. But I asked her if she could get a note to Jennifer, and she said she probably could. So I wrote on the back of another business card a corny little note wishing her a happy birthday and telling her that she had left her glass slipper at the ball and guess who had it.

I was ecstatic that I found a way to communicate with her, even if it was only for one more time. Then about a month went by. Again, no phone call. I didn't know what I'd do if she did call. I'd about written the whole thing off as just this dumb romantic fantasy, when one day the phone rang. It was her. I could barely speak and she felt as awkward as I did. But we did manage to talk and agreed to meet for lunch the next day. We talked some more. We went for a bike ride another time and talked more yet. I learned that she'd been married for two and a half years and was anything but happy. She and her husband had tried counseling for a year and were now, in fact, on the verge of separation. Another month, and they were separated. And Jennifer and I began seeing each other in earnest. In a year and a few months, we got married ourselves.

So this is where that song, "Dreamland Express", comes in again. We'll play it for you in a minute, and when it's over, that's probably going to be the last Jennifer story I'll tell today. Because it's the one that tells all the others. Then I'm going to give any of you who want to say something about your experience of Jennifer the opportunity to do that. But there's one last thing I want to tell you about this song, and I'm not exactly sure why I want to tell you, because it's extremely intimate. Maybe it's because on our 10th anniversary, which was a little over a year ago, Jennifer always wanted to renew our vows, with a whole bunch of people there...like a real wedding. And I was an old stick-in-the-mud and didn't want to make such a public display of my affection. Me, the romantic guy who found the glass slipper at the ball, had somehow become just an old fart. Now, of course, I'm really sorry I didn't do it. Now I get to be public about my affection for her this way, in a church, with everyone present but her.

But anyway, when Jennifer was in the hospital, in fact, the very last day she was in the hospital, when it was clear what had to be done, because she was always very clear on what she wanted to happen if she was ever in that situation, I told the medical staff that I wanted to hold her one last time. The doctor who was there, and the nurse, arranged it so I could crawl into the bed with her. Everybody left the room and closed the door. I put those earphones on, listening to "Dreamland Express", and I sang it to her, as best I could. And just when I finished the last lyric, she left. So if she could hear my voice, and everything in me hopes she could, it was the last earthly sound she ever heard. And, I am 100% certain, the last sound she would want to hear.

I’ll always have your glass slipper, Honey. Always....