Category Archives: Sons & Daughters

Eric, Jack, Mary, Merck Forest, Riley, Susan

Tribute to My Mother, July 6, 2016

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It‘s kind of a preposterous task to boil down a lifetime of experiences and emotions into a 10 minute tribute. I guess the best way I can sum it up is by expressing the overwhelming gratitude I feel for having had parents like mom and dad. I wish they were still here, but I also know how lucky I was to have had them at all. The way they raised us, the sacrifices they made for us, and the people they put around us… I am a lucky man and I constantly strive and hope I can live up to them.

I loved my mom very deeply, I told her it often, we prioritized our time together even when it wasn’t logistically easy, and we always had fun. We shared lots of adventures, tons of laughs and love, and I can say with great satisfaction that I have very few regrets—nothing left unsaid, and boat loads of great memories to draw on, if only I had more time to ponder them. I treasure this moment more than you can imagine and thank you all for being here to empower it.

Thinking back to our childhood, as Chris touched on, this is such an apt place for this celebration because we have many, many good memories here together from a time when, at least for us kids, things were so very simple…hiking up this path, laden with packs, a pack of dogs, trips to the pond, hikes up the mountain, shopping trips into Dorset and Manchester, and of course ice cream.

I think one of the reasons mom loved this trip so much is that it was a great organizational challenge, and certainly she never shied away from one of those. She always worried about such things, way more than she should, because there was never any doubt when she set her mind to something that it was going to happen. Mom was at her core a doer, biased toward action, an incredibly dynamic person who was never quite so comfortable as she was when in the midst of planning and executing one of her many projects. She was extremely bright, but even more so determined and tenacious. She loved new challenges both big and small, ranging from

  • How to remove a rooftop box from her car without help
  • How to get Gay into the house in Vermont
  • How to move an area rug
  • How to launch sea kayaks out of the ocean by oneself and get them back out again
  • How to line up your car in the garage to ensure its fully inside which as we all know involves a tennis ball
  • How to strap a backpack onto a golden retriever so that they might carry their own weight up the hill
  • Sew a child’s sleeping bag, knit sweaters, a down vest, a falcon mascot costume or ET Halloween costume
  • And of course, how to convert some small, sagging, shack of a home on the beautiful waterfront in Shelburne Nova Scotia into an incredible, sprawling home that was a veritable bed and breakfast, and adventure destination for her family and friends

She loved small kitchen tasks with the exact right tool… all forms of gadgetry and gear. And she loved to teach about it. I frequently remember her sharing some new tool and asking what I thought it might be for… or showing me the results of her completed work with pride and enthusiasm.

Mom found her greatest solace in the physical world, constantly learning and manipulating it to her vision, and she was highly effective and potent in doing so. But yet I’m also struck now looking back at how incredibly humble she was. You would never hear her toot her own horn about anything, she never flaunted or trumpeted her many accomplishments and skills. She was secure and comfortable in who she was as a person and so found no need for such things—always quick to deprecate herself, make a joke, laugh it off, or shift the focus.

Mom was also a loving person, who cared deeply for us, and I am humbled in knowing that Chris and I were her greatest project. That’s an incredible gift. Both mom and dad always prioritized time with the family over anything else and we had a lot of fun together.

The last phase of her life was not an easy one. For a woman who was a planner and doer, losing Dad at the very beginning of the new life they had planned together and waited for was a difficult blow… this was not the plan. But she never dwelled, true to her character she moved ever forward—strong, tough and resilient.

  • This is a woman who broke her ankle quite badly on the waterside in Canada, with an impending hurricane, and then dragged herself up the lawn 200 feet on a steep incline in the rain.
  • A woman who broke her wrist badly while alone in Vermont
  • A woman who drove herself back-and-forth to DHMC hospital on numerous occasions to receive difficult treatments for her cancer
  • And who drove herself home from Canada just 3 weeks before she died

It’s hard to fathom those things—they speak to that same courage, determination, and tenacity that served her so well in life—but I hate the thought of her having had to face them alone. Perhaps that is my only regret, that I couldn’t convince her to come live with us in those latter years. But I guess I am left to understand that this was symbolically something she could not abide—a surrender, a loss of her core identity and the independence she valued so much.

She made the most of those last 6 years living with metastatic cancer. I have no doubt those same strengths she called upon in life allowed her to live as long and as fully as she did. And in that time she got to know Mary really well and I’ve always treasured the bond and friendship they formed, she built relationships with my children, and we had many, many fun adventures — trips to Costa Rica, San Diego, Mammoth, central coast of California, to Vermont many times over, and to Canada. I will cherish those times together forever as some of the best times we ever had. I know it was not easy for her, but darn it she was not going to let anything get in her way, and I thank her for that beyond words for that.

There’s one memory that sticks out for me at the end. It was last time we saw her alive in Vermont, and we had taken her home from the hospital so she could be at home in her last days. We knew this was it, but we didn’t know how long it would be and so Chris and I made some difficult decisions about how we would manage through with our priorities and kids and jobs. We decided it was best if Mary and I got our kids home and I would come back a week later to spell Chris. Mom was pretty out of it by this point, but I told her we were going and I told her I loved her, and I can remember clearly she said “I know, you’ve told me it many times and I love you too”.

True to her nature, when I woke up early the next morning and came down stairs Meg was there and said “your mom is awake she’s been waiting up for you because wants to make sure to say good-bye”. Mom never slept well the night before a big trip so why would this night be any different? And so we all went in and gathered around her bed and she sat up and I can remember vividly her saying good-bye to Jack and Riley, pouring every ounce of strength she had left into being present, making sure to give them a big smile and to engage them. She knew this would be her last chance and she wanted to make the most of it.

I am so proud of her on so many levels, both in life and in death, and can only hope and trust that I will handle my own end, my own challenges in life, with that same grace, courage, and humility that she did.

She only ever asked that we pay it forward to our kids. I don’t know why but it’s always stuck with me a conversation we had as I was choosing a college. Of course I chose an extremely expensive private school over cheaper, just as good options. There was no pressure, I only remember her saying “just do the same for your kids”. Obviously that goes way beyond college tuition. And so I’m left to pay those same ethics, those same life skills, effectiveness, grace, toughness, love and humility forward to my children as my lasting tribute and the only one worthy of her. We will miss her but the things she stood for and valued will live on in the people she loved.

The experiences of life over the past 10 years have taught me that while there is never enough time on this earth with the people you love, there are much more important things in life than the mere question of how many years we have. Mom found solace, she found love, she found friendship, she found fulfillment, she found quiet and peace.

She was a great person. Let’s all take a moment to think about her and what she meant to us, and say good-bye.

Chris, Eric, Gaia, Jack, Mary, Merck Forest, Quinn, Riley, Robert, Susan, Teresa, Thea

Our first visit to the Memorial Bench at Merck Forest

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Robert and Susan’s descendants at the Merck Forest memorial bench

This week we all ventured to Merck Forest to see firsthand — for the first time — a bench installed in memory of our parents Robert and Susan. Located at Merck Forest and Farmland Center in Rupert, Vermont, the granite bench sits overlooking Page Pond near the farm’s barn, sap house, and horse shed. Simple, strong, and a bit rugged, the bench is graced by this simple inscription:

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Sitting on this beautifully-designed bench overlooking Merck’s farm was awe-inspiring for us. It’s so humbling that this tribute to our parents will be located in perpetuity in a place they loved so dearly.

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The bench overlooks Page Pond at Merck’s Farm Center

We are deeply grateful to our great family friend Dave, who conceived of the bench memorial and found a local craftsperson — John Hikory — to make it a reality. We are also thankful that the staff and trustees of Merck Forest — most prominently Communications Coordinator Marybeth Leu and Executive Director Tom Ward — felt that this memorial fit well with Merck’s important mission to demonstrate the benefits of innovative, sustainable management of forest and farmland.

Albany, Andy, Brian J., Charlie, Chris, Eric, Eric W., Karen, Ken, Laura, Norman, Penny, Robert, Robin, Sam, Susan

A complete Jensen family shot from 1977

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Jensen family photo, Albany, NY, 1977

This is a rather complete family picture from Karen and Charlie’s house outside of Albany, NY.

Standing are Uncle Eric and Uncle Charlie.

In the next row are Penny, Grandad, Dad, Mom, Eric, and Aunt Karen.

In front are Ken with Brian, Sam with Chris, Robin with Laura, and Andy. And I believe that’s Melissa — the child of one of Mom and Dad’s college friends — on the far right.

What makes me laugh about this picture is how our older cousins seem to have adopted one younger cousin each… with Eric and Andy seemingly not matched up.

56 Grandview, Chris, Eric, Gertrude, Homer M.

Eric and Chris with Grandma and Grandpa in front of the Grandview House, 1978

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Eric, Grandma, Chris, and Grandpa in front of 56 Grandview Street, 1978

It was more common for us to visit Grandma and Grandpa in San Diego, perhaps because California was a much more exciting place for us to go to than suburban Huntington was for our grandparents. But they did come to visit us a few times, and this is kind of a classic picture from one of those visits. Eric and I are wearing our Yankees baseball jackets, but Grandma and Grandpa look like they are all dressed up for something (probably just dinner). You can see the peach tree that was in our front yard just to the left of the picture, probably when it was just a sapling.

56 Grandview, Chris, Eric, John, Meg, Robert

With Meg & John at 56 Grandview Street, 1984

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John, Meg, Eric, Dad, and Chris in the living room at 56 Grandview Street, 1984
John, Meg, Eric, Dad, and Chris in the living room at 56 Grandview Street, 1984

There are a lot of little things that I like about this picture. It is nice to remember that we used to get together with John and Meg pretty frequently in the 1980’s; it wasn’t until the 2000’s when we would see them regularly again, in Nova  Scotia.

I like Dad’s smile here. Dad was sometimes hard to capture well on film, partly because he was more often the person taking the picture and partly because he tended to produce a grim face when the camera shutter opened. His humble and warm smile is nicely captured in this image.

I also like the view into 56 Grandview Street that this picture provides. Notice the partially-exposed wood on the kitchen door: this house was a work in progress for years as Mom and Dad laboriously removed the white paint from all the beautiful woodwork. You see the work in progress here.

And notice the early Mets fandom… pre-1986 World Series Championship folks!

Centerport, Chris, Robert, Susan

Sue, Bob, & Chris in Centerport, 1972

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This is a picture of Mom and Dad hanging out with Stacey, a friend and colleague of mom’s from Hunter College High School. As a parent who started out at age 31 with Gaia and then welcomed Quinn as a 41- and Thea as a 43-year-old, I am always struck by early pictures of Mom and Dad as parents. Figure that both are at or near 30-years-old in this picture! They look remarkably young.

Chris, Eric, Hiking & Camping, Merck Forest, Robert, Susan

Memories from Merck

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Merck Forest to this day still holds a deep emotional connection for me. It is a place that is completely synonymous in my memory with our family at that time in our lives together, and which in so many ways reflects mom and dad’s values and beliefs about what was important in life. It conjures up feelings of adventure and excitement, and calm easy-free days where you felt like you knew your place in the world. It was a retreat, where we could connect with nature and with each other without distraction; a place where we always had lots to do but absolutely nothing to worry about. Merck was a special place for us, and still is.

Chris places the year of our first trip to Merck as 1977 and that may be right. At least it sounds reasonable because I don’t clearly remember ever not going during those years. I don’t exactly remember when we stopped either. What I can say with confidence is that this was by far our most frequent and consistent family vacation. We went pretty much every summer, did pretty much the same things each time, and it never really got old.

It was not an easy vacation in terms of preparation. Only now as a parent of two myself do I realize how much effort it must have taken mom and dad to get us in position for this trip each year. But they had it down. Mom was most certainly the organizer and planner. I’m not sure the trip could ever have gotten off the ground without her many, very detailed lists/itineraries and unstoppable drive to get things done. She always enjoyed a good organizational challenge to tackle and she was extraordinarily good at it. But dad had a large role to play as well–sometimes just as sherpa and chief fire maker–but on a deeper level also as an unknowing spiritual leader and driver for the perennial nature of the trip. I think he felt at home at Merck and free to be who he was and what he wanted. In the end, after all the effort, it was a quiet and solitary trip and that suited him.

This was a legitimate trip into the woods. No phones, no electricity, no bathroom, no running water. Everything we needed had to be packed in on our backs, a little more than a mile up the hill to our campsite. Most of the time we would stay in a campground called Spruce, which in the early years had a lean-to structure that was later closed in to make a cabin. It kept us dry on rainy days and it had a wood burning stove, but otherwise it was pretty bare. I remember vividly the unnerving scamper of critters around the cabin at night, and the hammock we would hang from a beam in the middle to keep our food safe from unwanted scavenging. We would keep our perishable items in a cistern maybe 20 or 30 yards up the hill from the cabin, which had continuously running cold spring water. We would hand carry water from the cistern to the cabin in water carriers, which we would hang from a nail on the side of the cabin for drinking, washing hands, and doing dishes. Occasionally we would fill our Sun Shower bag and lay it on the grass during the day to collect heat from the sun for a civilized shower…but it never worked that well and often we wouldn’t bother.

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More frequently, our baths were swims at Birch Pond. It was maybe a mile walk at most down a hill from the cabin and we went most days that the sun shined, making it one of my fondest memories of going to Merck. In the earlier years there was a cool rope swing from a large tree at the side of the pond, where we climbed, swung, and released ourselves out over the water many times. There was always a dock at the head of the pond as well, where we could run and jump into the water. The many retrievers we had over the years loved going to Birch, running from the dock and bounding into the water to retrieve a stick we had thrown for them, procured from one of the trees by the pond or on the walk down. The little dogs, and I can remember Jenny in particular, would yap at the side of the pond…and eventually get thrown in from the dock by me, Chris, or mom. Incidentally, I never remember dad doing it, which is amuses me–this sort of foolery was not so much his style. Their little paws would fire away high out of the water as if they were trying to climb out, but eventually they would right themselves and cruise into shore.

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Fun times at Birch Pond2 PUBLISHED

The dogs were an important part of our family over the years and Merck was a vacation for them as well. We had as many as four dogs with us on our trips, which was quite a trick considering everything that needed to be packed into the car. But we made it work. Sometime very early on mom sewed a backpack for the bigger dogs so that they could pack in their own food. It looked kind of like saddle bags strapped under their waste and around their chest. Mom was of course very good at engineering and creating things of all kinds, and I think she she mostly enjoyed the fact that she was able to create this ingenious solution, more so than it actually helped relieve the packing burden. I’m sure she also felt good knowing that her four-legged family members pitched in and did their part.

We made fires, every night, which was a job primarily covered by dad–there were pine trees near the cabin, with loads of small dry branches, which we would collect as kindling to start the fire. Dad had a saw he would carry in for the slightly bigger stuff, and their was typically a stack of wood by the cabin as well.   When the fire got going, we would find sticks for s’mores and sit around together waiting for the stars to come out. When the night was clear, the stars were incredible. That sense of awe and wonderment of the universe, central to my personal spirituality (and in many ways very different from my parents’), I believe first traces back to those nights out by the fire staring up at the fog of stars in the pitch black night sky.

The hike out to town
The hike out to town

Occasionally we would would hike out for the day and drive into Manchester, VT. This was mostly driven by my mom. She loved going to Adams woodworkers and the various outlet stores in the area for whatever hot sale she could find. Not surprisingly, she also took a liking (as did we) to a little sweet shop called Mother Myrick’s, which had really great ice cream sundaes. On some of those outings we would also head to Bromley mountain to ride the alpine slide. I loved that…and would always try to rally for it. One year as we got older (and taller), Chris skinned his pointy knees and that was pretty much the end of it.

More than anything, the annual trip was about us being together, and it was quiet. Yes, we loved the adventure of it and the connection with nature–the rewarding feeling from a hard days work packing in and setting up. But I think what my parents loved most was the simple, undivided time where we could be together. I appreciate that much more now than I ever did then. They would usually schedule it toward the end of the summer as a last respite before the busy school year started. We played cards, read, whittled, made walking sticks, went on hikes, went swimming, played frisbee in the field, played with our dogs, and just hung out together. The Spruce Cabin sat alone looking out over a glorious alpine field surrounded by hillsides which would echo back at us when we called. And there was nobody and nothing for miles around, literally. We could go days without seeing a sole. It was complete silence. Just us, together.

Costa Rica, Eric, Jack, Mary, Riley, Susan

Courage and Determination

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There’s nothing fair about what happened to mom–first losing her soul mate over the course of a week, and then just four years later being diagnosed with late stage cancer. She easily could have given up and I know at times she struggled with the injustice of it. But mom was a fighter and she never wallowed. She was one of the strongest and most determined people you’ll ever meet. She was a doer, she made things happen–organized, ingenious, and highly effective. And she deployed those strengths to their fullest measure during the last 6 years of her life. I’m incredibly proud of her and thankful for that time she gave us. It was difficult for her, living with the constant specter of the end in our midst, but it also gave us an opportunity for a very long good-bye and we took every bit of it. Through her courage she gave us an incredible gift that we will carry with us forever.

From the time mom was first diagnosed with cancer until we last said good bye to her that fall morning in 2014, we visited with her no less than 20 times and never for less than a full week. Over the holidays we would go to Vermont, and a few summers we went to Canada, but more often than not it was mom who made the solo trip across country to California. She underwent a harrowing treatment schedule during those years, but she never let it stop her.

We always tried to make an adventure of it–whether it be a trip to San Diego, to wine country in Santa Yves or Paso Robles, a helicopter ride to Catalina Island, an adventure in Costa Rica, visiting our friend Beth in Carlsbad, or even just trips to the beach and new restaurants in Ventura and Santa Barbara, she was always game. During those years we had great times, with lots of laughs and love. She watched Riley and Jack grow up and built a wonderful friendship with Mary. We wanted more–but those times were priceless and we have few regrets.

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In April 2014, we made a family trip to Costa Rica. We all knew that it could be our last family trip together, but we didn’t focus on it. We went to the beach every morning and to the pool. She went boogie boarding. One of the last days of our trip we went on an “adventure tour” into the mountains. Mom road horseback up a mountain and then zip lined between tree stands hundreds of feet off the ground across spans many hundreds of meters wide. She went down a quarter-mile water slide, bathed in natural hot springs, and volcanic mud. It would be just six months before her death–ever brave and determined to take life head on.

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I’ll never forget the morning in Vermont we last said good bye to her. After more than a week between the hospital and getting mom home, Mary and I decided we needed to get the kids back to California. It was a really hard decision, but it made sense at the time. Our flight was very early in the morning so I said goodbye to mom the night before. But when we woke up at 4am, mom was awake too. She had been up all night to make sure she could say good bye to us. The cancer had taken its toll on her liver and she was not totally lucid all week, but you could tell she was pouring everything she had into being present at that moment. She was smiling and talking to us. She made sure to engage Jack and Riley each individually to tell them how much she loved them. I know it took everything she had. She passed away the next day. I’m so thankful to her for that. She knew it was her final good bye, and she wanted to make it a good one–one last act of determination from an incredibly strong, brave woman. True to her character, mom left nothing on the table.