In Memoriam

Before she was Suz Haidri, Suzanne Lynn Jenkins was born on a late September day in 1960, a middle child, a brother ahead and behind. She was a happy child, and girlhood was spent in a smallish, arid town east of San Diego. Her grandfather was an Audubon Naturalist and former Zookeeper, and Suzanne cared for animals and enjoyed being outdoors from the beginning. She deeply loved her lamb, Molly, that she raised, and God spoke to her through that love. From her mom, she learned to love plants and gardens, to raise green life out of dry and dusty soil. Her adolescence was not an easy one, and in those teenage years, she struggled at times with body image, self-esteem, and feeling worthy of being loved. At the cusp of young adulthood, she became a Christ follower through the example and love of her friend Cindy, and would remain a strong believer always, though her understanding of Christian truth would evolve through the years (as understandings, if not truths, tend to do).

She spent a few years sampling college life in San Diego, finding an eccentric but supportive church at the beach and a small tribe of similarly loud and fun-loving friends. At age 22, she surprised herself by falling in love with a man, a sailor, and then she surprised her family and friends by marrying him. She spent her honeymoon in Rio, but unfortunately, it was Rio, Wisconsin, in the teenage bedroom of her husband. Suzanne managed to grow up without having to babysit, and she had never held an infant or changed a diaper. The young couple planned to forego having any children, but they did not plan well.

At age 25, she had a daughter and 3 ½ years later, a son. These births changed her world in the usual ways, but also, she unexpectedly realized she deeply loved children, all of them, not only hers. She acted on that love by going back to school to study Child Development when her children passed Kindergarten, and through the ensuing years, she was privileged to be a Teacher’s Aide, Guidance Aide, Preschool Teacher, and Preschool Director. She loved and taught children whose parents had AIDS, war orphans in Africa, the children of doctors and the children of homeless parents, immigrant children, and First Peoples’ children.

Being that she lived in America, she had to practice active shooter drills in the classroom with 3 and 4-year-olds. She vowed, like Victoria Leigh Soto and others, to give her life to try to stop someone from killing her students. She never had to do this and only left the classroom after many fruitful, happy years when Parkinson’s disease robbed her of the ability to safely care for her little ones. Several times through the years, she heard from the parents of children or the students themselves, now young men and women, of how they remembered her and the classroom and the positive influence she had on them, learning how to share, how to be kind to one another, and how to express emotions in healthy ways.

Suzanne was a bit nerdy, loved to Geocache and play poker, mahjong, and Words with Friends. She was a bit corny, loved to have her picture taken with large Sasquatches and Smokey Bears, and odd European statues. Suzanne led a bit of a peripatetic life, though not by her choice, living in many different cities and all the states up and down the West Coast, finally spending her last year in North Carolina. Suzanne traveled a bit, clearing an airstrip in Papua New Guinea, building houses for the poor in Mexico, playing with children in Uganda, sightseeing in Canada and Ireland, and visiting family in Norway. She was planning a trip to Japan to visit her expatriate son when COVID struck.

She loved community gardens and home gardens, and once had a yard with 50 rose bushes and a pomegranate tree. She excelled at organizing themed birthday parties for her children and nieces and nephews, and she was thrilled to be appointed a Deacon at a Presbyterian church she attended. She was an inveterate writer of deeply personal journals much of her life, and she was a reader as well, never without at least one book in progress by her side, always. She loved going for a hike, and when she could no longer hike, she got a recumbent, power-assisted 3-wheeled bicycle and later an ‘off-road’ adventure wheelchair made possible by loving friends and family. She did ‘Parkinson’s Boxing’, special fitness classes, water aerobics, physical therapy, and much more in her final years.

She worked hard to be positive, and she chose to find something to enjoy in every day of her life, even the bad ones. She grieved having Parkinson’s disease and the inexorable, progressive loss of function and abilities. But Suzanne did not complain; she was very brave, and she never gave up.

In the last several years of her life, she and her mother spoke by phone nearly every day. Her mom passed away 2 years before she did, and Suzanne missed her mom sorely. She believed and hoped for an eventual reunion in the world to come. Please, may it be so. A scripture verse that was very personal to Suz and that she herself experienced was Zephaniah 3:17:

“The LORD your God in your midst,
The Mighty One, will save;
He will rejoice over you with gladness,
He will quiet you with His love,
He will rejoice over you with singing.”

She was preceded in death by her mom and dad (Marilyn and Elmer) and by her grandchild, Benito, whom she longed to hold.

She is survived by her husband Paul, her two children (Marylin, Soren), her best friend Laura Lyon, her other best friends Judie and Brian Frederickson, a son and daughter in law (Edgar, Misako), two brothers (Daniel, Peter), several sisters-in-law (Beth, Sandy, Grace, Vicki, Rasma, Veronica, Isabel), two brothers in law (Benjamin, Christopher), a plethora of regular and grand nieces and nephews, a bevy of cousins, an aunt or two, and a loving bouquet of good friends scattered around the country. She did not have any known enemies.

Suzanne requested cremation and that her ashes be scattered along her favorite hike in the Pacific Northwest, the Fort Cascades Loop Trail in the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area.

How far that little candle threw her beams! So shines a good life in a weary world. May her memory be for a blessing, and a comfort to us all.