(don’t) Call Me Karen
When did our culture become so illiterate and unimaginative that people now resort to the use of otherwise innocuous given names as insults? I am not referring to the age-old expression about ‘every Tom, Dick and Harry.’ No, today it’s Chad and Stacy, Kyle and Becky, just to name a few. All these monikers are associated with insultingly negative stereotypes.
Hmm. Stereotypes. Why, back in my day, we were told never to indulge in stereotyping people. That said, I suspect right about now some reader, a someone as lacking in ingenuity as they are in vocabulary ‒ someone who does not even know me! ‒ is thinking, “What a Karen!” Go ahead and insult me if you must, but for crying out loud, make it sporting. Consult a dictionary.
By Karen, they mean I am essentially an entitled, middle-aged, white female. I think that definition is even supposed to include some made-up word about my sexual identification, but that is a bridge too far for this ol’ girl. I admit to getting cranky at times. I cop to being old. And though I love to point out just for kicks that I am not and never have been the color of copy paper, the “racially aware” would call me white. “Racially aware.” What a saccharin, eerily Orwellian euphemism for that dreaded “R” word.
Karen. I have to tell you that any fool who would call me this to my face would likely be gob-smacked as I looked them in the eye and expressed my thanks for the compliment. I don’t think I am worthy of that honor, I might even add, but truly, thanks for the word of encouragement. Let me explain to you what the name Karen means to me, and maybe you’ll understand why my reply to such a fool is not as insane as it seems.
My wonderful friend, Karen Vincenti, is who comes to mind whenever I hear that name. Recently my Karen passed from this life.
Karen was so many things to me: friend, sister, fellow weirdo, prayer-warring foxhole buddy. I like to think we were kindred spirits, but that is mostly aspirational on my part, I suspect. In every way, she was the woman of valor I long to be. Karen possessed a curious intellect and was an avid reader on a range of subjects. Karen lived humbly, laughed unreservedly, and was equipped with a deliciously down-to-earth sense of humor. Not long ago, I remarked to her when she had said something truly hilarious that she seemed even funnier since the stroke she had suffered a while back. She just grinned and said, “Yup, I got a broken filter.” Few of the people who would wield her first name as a blithely insipid insult could have survived her life, however ‒ even with the assistance of their narcissistic nirvana, social media.
Karen lost her beloved husband Joe on a family vacation. He had just finished rowing her about on the lake, reminiscing about their life together, telling her how much he loved her and their family. On the way back to their rooms, he rubbed his shoulder, quipping that he had likely overdone it with the oars. He went to take a shower before dinner and collapsed from a massive heart attack. Karen was left to finish the quest of seeing their three children through to adulthood. She has always remained a steady source of love and wisdom for each of them since.
Karen worked hard for her family, making a modest living. Though a widow, she always gave generously to others with less. At one point, she saved and stretched her faith to go on a trip to Morocco for the sole purpose of showering strangers to her faith with the love of the God she trusted in everything. Yes. She is that: a Jesus Freak.
In time, stress and genetics caught up with her middle-aged frame. Diabetes and coronary artery disease led to Karen having a heart attack. As always, with the faith of a happy, trusting child, she fought her way through by turning to the one she most often referred to as “my Jesus.”
The story of her recovery from her stroke best exemplifies why I wish to be like her, to be worthy, maybe someday, to be called “Karen.” When it happened, nobody, including her, realized what was wrong until it was said to be too late by the medical profession, which was unable to do much of anything except nod knowingly but condescendingly, declaring she would never again have the use of the left side of her body.
Karen and I are almost exactly the same age. Just a few months separate our birthdays. So, when this happened to her, it freaked me out. I did not want to see this effervescently witty, bright woman in so diminished a state. I avoided going to see her until a faithful friend lovingly chided me and told me Karen was asking to see me.
I went in search of a gift to bring her, probably because the guilty coward inside of me felt the need for a prop, I suppose. Still, what do you get a friend who has lost the use of half of her entire body? I had no idea what the stroke might have done to her in other ways. I ached, thinking about the possible damage to her clever and curious mind. I settled on a sleeveless poncho wrap knowing she liked stylish things but never really spent much money on herself.
As I crossed the hospital lobby, I began to reflect on how meaningless my gift seemed in light of her needs. I stopped at the gift shop and bought flowers as well. I was more focused on how I felt until it dawned on me that was not how Karen would have approached things. An unflaggingly glass-half-full encourager, she would have set aside her discomfort and just tried to spread a little joy, bring a little light, and even cry with those who weep if that was what was needed. And always, she would pray. Not with grand speeches but from her heart as if conversing with her dearest friend.
My heart was in my throat as I stood for a long moment outside the door to her room. A crowd of recriminations pushed and shoved to get to the front of my brain as I desperately rifled through cubbyholes looking for the right thing to say. I finally gave up, just knocking and muttering a perfunctory hello.
“Mags! Hey, girl. Come on in!” Karen called out, her voice exuberant as ever, as if nothing at all was out of the ordinary.
I crept into the room, taking care to look everywhere and anywhere but at the form in the bed. Stealing a glance, I saw a dazzling smile fill half of her face, beaming at me like a warm fire on a cold night.
“I missed ya! How are you?!? How’s that book coming?”
After setting down my purse next to the gift bag and flowers, I reached out to give her an awkward hug.
“Um, I’m fine, Karen. How are…” I swallowed back the tears that threatened. “The book’s going fine. But how are…”
“I’m good. I still have my Jesus. He has been SO good through all of this. They say I’m not gonna use my left side again. But I don’t buy that. They don’t know what my God can do.”
Responding, I tried to sound as normal as I could, but everything I thought of saying felt all wrong. I turned to my meager offerings, realizing how much they were not up to the task at hand. Karen gushed over the gifts anyway. She had me help her try on the wrap as she took in the flowers and tried to read the card.
Even as she related the details that had landed her in a hospital bed, I was surprised at her ability to gather her thoughts. Her words held not a trace of self-pity. Any concern evident in her voice was for her family, especially her children.
Karen stopped mid-sentence at one point to ask me to uncover her feet. Being women of that certain age, I figured she must be having a hot flash. I remember thinking how unfair that seemed under the circumstances. I did as she asked and sat back down in the chair next to the bed.
"And he said unto her, 'Daughter, be of good comfort: thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace.' " Luke 8:48
“Okay. So, Mags, watch my left big toe.”
I looked at Karen, confused and wondering if I had heard her correctly.
“Excuse me. What did you say?”
Karen turned her head to look at me. She donned a lopsided grin, and with an impish gleam in her eye, she repeated herself.
“I said, ‘Watch my left big toe!’”
So, I did as I was bid.
Karen pointed at her left foot with her right index finger and decreed, “Left big toe, you start moving in the name of Jesus Christ.”
Well, if you guessed her toe moved, you would be right. And not by just a barely perceptible millimeter for a second or something likewise easily dismissed. That toe went up and down, up and down. I half expected it to break into a cadence, so miraculous was the feat occurring right in front of me.
“Um, ah, Karen,” I stammered. “Do, um…”
“Cool, huh!?! Jesus is great, right?” She was sporting a smirk on the right side of her face.
“Um, yeah. Sure. Karen, do your doctors know about this?” I blurted out unceremoniously and a bit too loudly.
“Oh yeah. Of course, they can’t explain it, so they kinda don’t believe it. But God’s just getting started. I’m just hangin’ on for the ride, you might say.”
She was right about that too. She walked again, albeit mostly with a cane for balance. She eventually could lift her left arm, though that hand remained weak. Best of all, though, she regained her wide, infectious smile. In the days, weeks and months that followed her recovery, Karen’s face would take on a kind of beauty I cannot quite describe with words. It was almost as if I could see through a thinning in the veil betwixt the present and past glimpses of the girl Joe had fallen in love with so many years earlier. Whenever we drove anywhere together in the years since, we’d crank the tunes, laughing and talking incessantly, like a pair of teenagers.
Almost everyone I know has faced their share of loss, disappointments, and hardships. It is part of life on this side of the eternal divide ‒ a fallen race in a fractured universe. I know of very few, though, who run at these challenges armed with joy like wild child warriors, swords drawn, helmets cocked at a jaunty angle, shields of their resurrected King braced against the enemy’s assaults. I only know one by the name of Karen.
So if someday some linguistically lazy fool decides to hurl their pathetic internet epithet in my direction and call me Karen, I’ll stop them cold. I’ll tell them, “Don’t call me Karen. I haven’t earned that honor yet.”
“Don’t call me Karen. I haven’t earned that honor yet.”
Goodbye, my dear friend. I know when death, a jealous enemy with a dismal future in a fiery lake, swung at you, all he came away with was an empty suit, a worn and tattered one at that. You had already run like the gleeful girl you always are, flying into the arms of a smiling King. I know I shall see you again one day. Until then I shall miss you. It’s not forever, though, it’s just for now.
