Karen Cheek Teague

Tomorrow, at 4:00 PM, my family -- the Cheek side, to be specific,
will gather together to remember my Aunt Karen, who we lost sometime overnight on Wednesday. At times like this, you tend to look back over your memories with that person and you probably wish that you had more time together, more happy memories to linger over. Of course, I have memories of my Aunt Karen at all the family gatherings---holidays, birthdays, cookouts, weddings. But I have just a few distinct memories of her in the short 25 years I knew her.

One is largely embedded in my mind thanks to a camcorder that my parents got when Danielle and I were little. It's Christmas Day, and all the kids have been sent to play in the living room, while all the adults fight over space in the kitchen. There's some Christmas music playing, "Jingle Bell Rock" to be exact, and in walks Aunt Karen. She's decked out in Christmas attire--I think even some jingle bell earrings--and she's dancing to the song with the kiddos. That's a good memory.

I also remember loving Aunt Karen's Christmas and birthday gifts. She always had a little treasure to impart to us as little girls---two of my favorites were a handheld mirror that looks like a flower, and a birthday party teddy bear, who was my only stuffed animal to ever have a birthday party complete with Easy Bake Oven cake. That's a good memory.

The last memory might be my favorite. When I was in middle school, I think, Aunt Karen and Uncle Mike had a cookout of sorts at their home. They were living out in the country then--I can't remember where exactly. At the time lots of their neighbors were Latino and the party was appropriately Latin-themed. That was my first taste of Spanish rice. My first time listening to Spanish music on the radio. Come to think of it, probably my first interaction with anyone who was Latino. I think I love this memory because it exemplifies that she loved people. She loved her family. She loved her neighbors. That's a good memory.

It is difficult to even say the word death. It took me a couple minutes before I could make myself type that sentence. It's like writing it gives some sort of finality to it. I realized yesterday morning, as I was taking in the phone call mom had just made to tell me the news, that I often use the word too carelessly. I don't realize its weight. In reality it is a terrible, heavy, soul-wrenching word. It carries so much emotion. On my drive to work, I listened to Page CXVI sing "In Christ Alone", which is one of my favorite hymns. I've been listening to this song on repeat for the last week or so for whatever reason, and it has been a sweet week of hearing them sing the Gospel to me on my drives to and from work. Yesterday morning I found it especially sweet, but also much weightier than I remembered. The song is about Christ's love for us---how He came here, lived perfectly the messed-up human life that we endure, and died, though he was innocent, for all the ways we fall short...wait, stop here. He died? Jesus died. He breathed his last, his friends grieved, his mother's heart broke, he died. That is weighty. This is where the hymn gets really good:

"There in the ground his body lay
Light of the World by darkness slain
Then bursting forth in glorious day
Up from the grave He rose again!

And as He stands in victory
Sin's curse has lost its grip on me
For I am His, and He is mine
Bought with the precious blood of Christ!"

I mean, does your heart not swell to hear those words!? That is the good news! "Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?"(1 Corinthians 15:55) Page CXVI's version of this hymn ends so well with this refrain:

"No guilt in life,
No fear in death,
From life's first cry
To final breath."