And Now We Are Five

I grew up among cousins…lots of them.  A number on my dad’s side of the family, and a small group of six first cousins on my mother’s side.  We were, and are, the Cash Cousins, descendants of our grandparents, Port and Georgia (Punkin) Cash, and of their three children.  From Aunt Frankie and her husband, Watt Atwood, came my cousin Frances.  From my mother, Evelyn and father, Bob Jones, came my brother, Allan, and me.  And from the youngest, my Uncle Gene and his wife Lucille (Keck), my cousins Karen, Kathy and Kelly Cash.  

But now we are five.  Last Monday, April 4, a massive heart attack cut short Karen’s retirement and left the rest of us missing her and wishing we had spent more time together.  Almost as far back as I can remember, our childhood holidays were filled with gatherings of our three families.  We laughed, played, bickered, snickered and loved each other, spending more or less time together as our families grew and our paths diverged.  Many of these good times were during family reunions at the farm.  The pictures that follow are from some of those get-togethers, as well as from my mother’s (her Aunt Evelyn’s) 90th birthday party.

A celebration of Karen's life was held on Friday, April 8, in the Fort Worth Botanic Gardens Fragrance Garden.  The following piece was written by Karen’s younger sister, Kelly, and posted on Karen’s Facebook page.  

“If ever I should leave you, whom I love, to go along the silent way, grieve not, nor speak of me with tears, but laugh and talk of me as if I was there beside you.”  

                                           -A poem fragment found in her Aunt Evelyn Jones’ family Bible

Karen Cash was born in Houston, Texas on February 12, 1952, the first of three children of Dr. Charles E. Cash and Lucille Mathilda Keck Cash.  When Karen was around two, the family moved to Fort Worth, Texas.

 

Karen grew up on Crestwood Drive with a large group of neighborhood kids, riding bikes, playing kick the can and amassing large quantities of fireflies in jars.  Always the hard worker, Karen bought her first horse from teaching swimming lessons.  Karen always loved horses, and her first horse was an elderly dowager named “Princess” who could barely break a trot, and her second, Payoso, was a lively paint.  She was dedicated to improving her horsemanship throughout the years, and eventually was competing in national pole bending  events on a beautiful palomino named Tiffany at the Fort Worth Rodeo.  Our father would go with her to arrive at 5:00 am at the barns to muck out the stall and prepare for the day.

 

Raised in the Age of Aquarius, she was part of the Class of 1970 at Arlington Heights High School, and Sweetheart of the Fort Worth Horseshoe Club.  After two years at Sweet Briar College, she finished her Bachelor of Early Children Education at the University of Texas, where she also made lifelong friends when she pledged Kappa Alpha Theta.

Wanting to see the world, she signed on as a flight attendant with American Airlines and began a career mixing business and travel that lasted over 30 years.  Karen liked to ride fast horses, scuba dive the deep seas and drink espresso on the Orient Express.  She moved to Chicago and married John Kokernut McNeel in 1987.  Their son Bart Cash McNeel was born there.  She loved being a Mom to Cash and his friends.  She also organized a successful grassroots “Mom” movement to transition an abandoned park into a well-tended baseball field.

After Cash became a Jayhawk attending University of Kansas, she moved back to Fort Worth.  She loved her new life here, reconnecting with old friends, enjoying events like cutting horse futurities and rodeo, and walking the trails with her beloved yellow lab LuLu.  She became a Grand Aunt to her four young cousins and hosted many pool parties, cookie decorating holiday parties, and “No Reason” parties.  Karen loved a party! 

She had just found her dream “Volunteer Career” helping children learn the joys of riding at Camp Carter when she was felled by a heart attack in her home on Monday, April 4, 2022.  She is survived by her son, Bart Cash McNeel and his wife, Jenna McNeel, and sisters Kathy and Kelly Cash, and nieces/nephews Ian Cash Chisholm, Lee Cash Chisholm, Sunny Vanderbeck and Christian Vanderbeck.

In lieu of flowers, please donate to The Nature Conservancy’s “Plant One Tree” program at https://preserve.nature.org/page/83246/donate/1.

Thank you all for giving us the gift of your grace, support and friendship.

Psalm 23

The Lord is my shepard, I shall not want

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me beside the still waters

He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. 

The Peace of Wild Things, Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and I am free.