My friend Jen

My friend Jen passed away between last night and early this morning. Her husband called to tell me a little while ago. Over the last couple of days, it's been very difficult to concentrate on much more than her. Before I go on, please offer a prayer for her family. Jen, well she needs no more prayers because she has returned to where love began. She no longer has to feel cancer trying to take over her life and no longer has to battle for the next breath.

If you ever read AOL Political Conundrum you would have read a lot of what Jen did. She posted there and on a couple of other message boards for a long time. She was a powerhouse! There was not much she didn't know about the government or what was going on in this country. She posted as FloridaBeachBum.

After 9-11, I was fully invested in PTSD and what we were headed for when it came to it in our new veterans that would come. Jen was already up on all the questions that should have been asked but never were by anyone who would have made the answers matter. Both of us ended up focusing on the 2004 election and the rest of what was going on, but it was the way we started that proved what a intelligent woman she was along with a loving one.

Jen had emailed me a very, very long post about 9-11 too soon for us to know each other well enough. I emailed her back and told her that I couldn't use any of it because I had to deal with facts, not speculation. (She should have smacked me) Jen turned around and spent hours upon hours finding what she thought I needed to read and then she opened my eyes to things I didn't want to see, things I didn't want to know or even think were possible. She's probably the reason why it finally dawned on me that either this nation had such a massive failure of all our defense systems, all at the same time, the same day we needed them, or someone made them fail.

Anyway, setting that aside, Jen and I got very close after that. She managed to do the same to people who agreed with her on the PC board as well as people who did not agree with her. No one ignored Jen, that's for sure and she earned their respect.

When she was first diagnosed with cancer, I drove down to Stuart to see her in the hospital. We hadn't met yet. I walked into the hospital room and as soon as I did it was as if she just saw a movie star show up at her doorway. Her face lit up. Believe me, I'm not that big of a deal. When I returned home, I posted on the PC board to let people know what was going on and within a couple of hours, there were a lot of messages from people praying for her, even the people she argued with. Two thought it was inappropriate that I posted "such personal information" on the board, but considering I was doing what Jen asked me to do, I basically told the two people where to go and how to arrive there swiftly.

Time never allows me to go in there anymore. It's too hard to post anything there and then go back over and over again to reply to replies. It just never ends. I do miss most of the people in that group and Jen was responsible for brining a lot of the people there together.

The arrangements have not been made yet. Her parents have to come from California. I don't know when I will have to go back to Stuart. Traveling down there the other day and back took 5 hours, so whenever the day is, I won't post that day or very little if at all. Now think of this. Jen meant a lot to me and to all the people she came into contact with on line. Naturally she meant a lot to her family. Think of all the lives this woman touched. Jen's life ended because of cancer. It ended because she didn't have health insurance and didn't go for check ups until she had problems. We need to do something so that the next time someone like Jen comes into this world with the ability to bring people together, make them think and encourage them to do something about it, we do not let them go through life without the medical care that could save their lives.

We need to make sure that all our troops coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the veterans already here, do not come back to a system designed to help them heal, end up being the reason they die.

This world is filled with too many selfish people who see nothing wrong with making more and more money while other people have to suffer for it. We cannot afford to loose more like Jen so early in life. She had too much more to give. Gifts we will never have because she is no longer here.