Karen and I were not cousins but as children, we thought that somehow we should have been. We shared six cousins in common, children of a marriage between my dad’s brother (Otto) and her father’s sister (Alma).

Their kids were cousins to both of us but we were not quite cousins to each other.  Years later, Karen married one of my cousins on my mom’s side of the family tree and I joked that now we were really cousins. Although the marriage did not last forever and she remarried, Karen remained part of the circle from childhood, that group of family, friends, schoolmates and neighbors that cradle us in our youth. Those circles change as we move through life and today that old circle has shrunk just a little more at Karen’s passing.

Our neighborhood on the north side of St. Joseph, Mo., stretched from the Goetz Brewery to the west to my elementary school, Webster on the east, to Fifth Avenue on the north and to my parish church, St. Joseph’s Co-Cathedral to the south. Those boundaries are mine, not official ones.

In my first decade of life, I lived within blocks of both sets of grandparents, an uncle and his family, and three cousins. Our home was on North 11th Street. Granny and Pop lived around the block on North 10th, and my Uncle Roy’s family lived on North 9th.

The side street that connected these streets together was Lincoln and Karen’s family lived on the corner of 9th and Lincoln.

Like me, she lived in the shadow of what local residents called Sisters Hospital. The former St. Joseph’s Hospital is just a memory now and even the building has vanished with the past. I was born there and it was a vital part of all our lives.

Karen was one of my cousin Mary’s best friends. With Sharon, who later married into my family, the trio was inseparable. I was just a little younger than all three and to me, the girls embodied the epitome of what cool teenagers could be. Mary Lou died in 2001 after a valiant battle with ovarian cancer.

Like me, Karen earned a bachelor’s degree in history — hers from Missouri Western in St. Joseph, mine from Missouri Southern in Joplin. We shared a little more in common than cousins and the same hometown.

Unlike me, Karen remained in the old neighborhood.

Almost every day I receive e-mails from my aunt, an aunt who was Karen’s former mother-in-law and Karen received the same cute e-mails that I did. Although we both have busy lives and did not communicate often, she was there, a remaining fixture of my childhood, a small piece of the “old days.”

Last Friday, she was involved in a traffic accident that claimed her life. In an instant, her full life was shattered when a big truck pulled out and around a car stopped to turn, pulling into Karen’s lane of traffic.

I am saddened by her death and my heart mourns for the loss of Karen, for the hole her passing leaves for her husband, her children, her grandchildren, her parents, family, and many friends.

Karen was a thread woven into the fabric of my childhood, a patch of cloth in the patchwork quilt of life. Just as most of us pick up an heirloom quilt and remember the scraps of cloth from one garment or another, my memories piece together a mental quilt of the past. Karen is a part of that quilt and she will ever remain in my memories, always be a part of my personal past.

Godspeed, Karen, you will never be forgotten.

Lee Ann Sontheimer Murphy is a freelance columnist for The Neosho Daily News.