Michele Munson, friend
Jennifer and I are both mothers of fine sons who are the same age. We met in 2009, at a time when we both were striving to integrate our families into a neighborhood where we often felt like outsiders. We were highly educated women with progressive ideas and partners. Women who, while neither of us craved the limelight, were committed to building community and equity and justice where ever we were planted.
When I first met Jennifer in 2009, we bonded over the hope and promise of a new political order just underway with President Barack Obama. Such an exciting and energizing time! Along with our sons and spouses, we became deeply bonded friends on and off the baseball field as members of the Webster Thunder community. We shared laughter, meals, hotel rooms, box scores, and endless conversations about our world and how we were impacting it. Jennifer was like "the sun in my face." She was optimistic, incredible kind and passionately loyal.
In 2014 to 2017, our family fell upon some hard times. We determined that it was necessary to make a fresh start and so we began the process of selling our home and leaving the neighborhood we shared with Jen and her family. We later determined that our destiny lay in Door County, Wisconsin, and we readied ourselves for an out of state move in August of 2017. While we hadn't been neighbors for more than a year and lived about 45 minutes away from each other, Jennifer and Mark determined to love us through that final week before our move date by providing hearty, healthy and delicious home-made dinners for our entire family daily. They designed menus, shopped for ingredients, prepared hot meals and brought them to our home everyday that week. And on the last night before we left town, they delivered Mark's Awesome Sandwiches. They also included a gift of Jennifer's one-of-a-kind publication entitled "Buehler-Patrick Recipes". Along with recipes for all items included in our daily meals, it contained poetry, family pictures, loving thoughts, and sweet memories.
I have held on to this special gift from my dear friend, Jennifer. I have looked at the pictures, smiled as I read her comments and continued to feel the love she put into it. I have made the recipes many times and always with joyful thoughts of her. I will continue to make them. And I hope to remember her with joy again one day soon.
I wanted to share these excerpts from Jennifer's 2017 parting gift to me and my family with Mark, Ethan and all who loved her. She was so easy to love.
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