KAREN METCALF

Karen Mae Metcalf 10/17/1943 ~ 4/6/2010 Karen Metcalf died early Tuesday morning, April 6th, struggling to live. I thank so much the paramedics, firefighters, and police who fought their way up our hill through the snow to perform mightily in her behalf and mine, but it was not to be, and she finally slipped away, leaving her battered body behind, leaving me, her kids, and her world with a terrible emptiness. I miss her so terribly. I now write through a literal veil of tears, trying to tell the rest of the world about her in a short column topped by a recent photo of this beautiful lady. Barb Guy could write it more eloquently, but I'll do my best. Karen left tangible items for our memories, but they are the common items of our lives. What we really retain, perhaps unknowingly, is her quiet legacy of what she felt she should be, and should do, through her life. She believed in a solid God, working for her, in her, but that she should be moving and doing as she prayed. And she moved throughout her life, performing and serving. Born in a small borough in Pennsylvania, she left her comfort zone and went to the big city, Pittsburgh, to study for a diploma in nursing, then sought her fortune out west, working at Stanford Medical Center in Palo Alto, catching first my eye and within about 15 minutes, my heart, when we met in the Coronary Care Unit. Moving east to Rochester, New York for my pediatric residency, she birthed first Ian, and later Tim as we spent two years in the Navy in Tennessee, then moved to Salt Lake City for my job at the University of Utah. We adopted Sarah our first year here, a Korean child who liked pizza a whole lot more than kimchi. Her family became her focus - when Ian started school at Oakridge, Karen became the librarian, and worked there 'til Sarah graduated from high school, making herself available for the kids in school and after school, for conversation and parenting, while I was often busy, as Karen said, "saving the world." When there was trouble with grades, or money, or car keys, the kids would go to Karen - she had the answers and the help, through their turbulence of adolescence and young adulthood. She was known as Mom to half the neighborhood kids as well, even as she re-upped her nursing license and worked 12 years in the Child Protection Team at Primary Children's, helping youngsters through sexual abuse exams. Now our three kids, in raising their own families, still have looked to her for ongoing guidance. Breast cancer intervened a couple of years ago, and recently a metastatic brain tumor, removed, irradiated. Through it all she remained positive, doing what she needed to do or to have done to her, "chugging through it." She may have been cancer-free at last, but this past weekend deteriorated very suddenly, and died early Tuesday morning. What Karen leaves to us is her legacy in memory, in her children all three being good parents themselves, our memory of her quiet, positive attitude and endurance and faith in God as her Savior, her love of people given and returned, her high standards of conduct, honesty, integrity, and parenting - what we all were supposed to learn in kindergarten, right? Karen did. My job, perhaps that of all of us, is to remember her example, for me to ask myself, how would Karen handle this? We will have a memorial service at 1 p.m., Monday, April 12th, at Mt. Olympus Presbyterian Church, 3280 East 3900 South, a half block west of I-215. Y'all come - we'll cry a bit, laugh a bit, and enjoy God's grace and her memory. In lieu of flowers, which tend to wilt, please send a contribution in her memory to The Sharing Place for grieving children, in honor of Chris Chytraus, the founder, and Stephanie Steele, the current Executive Director.