RIP Candy Jenkins

The first time I physically encountered Candy Jenkins was the year my mom died. I had seen her here and there around Shingletown and in passing, as I hung out with her niece, Stacey. But shy as I was, it was never more than just a casual glance, or a mumbled hello.


Then came that day in October 1983, when I was in front of the Shingletown Store, fumbling in a fog of grief, trying to figure out in which pocket I’d stowed my post office box key. My intended movements and destination were completely subverted as I suddenly became submerged in a big, warm, bosomy hug. I can’t tell you what she said to me in way of consolation at the loss of my mother, but I can tell you that Candy was the first person who had ever hugged the stuffing out of me. I came from a family of people who were not overly affectionate. I was positively enamored at a love that so overflowed.

Over the years, one of the things I have always associated with Candy is her amazing love for children—her own, those in her extended family, strangers on the street, it really didn’t matter. She leaves three biological children who enchantingly have carried on that legacy to their own children, and she leaves a lifetime of other people who have been touched and altered by such pure affection.

When I was eighteen or so, Candy and I both worked at Big Wheels for a while. I recall Candy being so happy and positive on the job. She made a great waitress—exuberant, friendly, quick, and hard working. She didn’t stay working long, ultimately quitting because she didn’t want to do dishes. She wasn’t indignant about it or anything. In her sunniest of dispositions, she simply said, “I just don’t like doing dishes. I don’t like doing them at home, and I don’t like doing them here, so it probably doesn’t make a lot of sense for me to do this.”

I have thought often over the years of that conversation, admiring her ability to be so honest with herself and others about what does and doesn’t work for her. It takes a solid degree of courage to be that way-- a courage I have yet to perfect in my own life; a courage that Candy herself sometimes forgot she possessed.

Also not surprising was Candy’s sense of humor. A highly-honed family trait, Candy was not often without some casual observation about life that would leave those around her in a fit of giggles. I found her ability to laugh at herself attractive, and her ability to transmute her sense of humor to fit any occasion almost beyond human, from the darkly sardonic, to the randomly flip.

The last time I saw Candy was a few years ago, at a Johnny Lang concert. I remember the visible pain on her face as she told me of her mom’s passing. This was also within weeks of her family losing her beloved granddaughter, Rebekah. I can’t help but smile now when I think of her existing, glory to glory with Jesus—home and happy with those many souls she’d loved and lost while here on earth—Effie and Jim, Carol Ann, Rebekah, and others. I laugh when I think of her at this moment, at her most effervescent, enquiring of Jesus about who works in the kitchen, because she didn’t like to do dishes at home on Earth, and she won’t be doing them there, either.