Remembering Katherine

Ten years ago, I first shared this photo here on Tea With Friends. I'd recently spoken with my artist friend Katherine and mentioned that I needed to order some nice business cards, something I just hadn't gotten around to. "I can design you a card!" she said. Katherine was creating a website for her custom stationery business, and we were both really busy with work, so I was surprised when she soon emailed me a beautiful watercolor of a teacup and pencil. The artwork was something Katherine had created just for me, inspired by the teacup pictured on my blog header at the time, and I was thrilled to have new business cards with her design. I have a few of them left, and the cards mean even more to me now, because in the early morning hours of September 27, Hurricane Helene sent a tree crashing through Katherine's home in Augusta, where she was asleep in bed. Her husband was away at a conference, and she and her Jack Russell terrier were both killed instantly.

Katherine wrote a column called the Thoughtful Gardener for the magazine I edited years ago, but she and I had been friends before that. If I had to describe our friendship, I would say we bonded over a love of Jesus and … pretty things! A nurse by training, she was a devoted homeschooling mom when I first met her, and we often talked about faith and creativity since she was into art and I was into writing. She went on to achieve many accolades in her artistic life, getting commissions for her work from all over the country, projects as varied as illustrating the invitations to the New York Botanical Garden's ball and creating eighteen botanical watercolors corresponding to the eighteen holes of golf at a certain little golf tournament they have in Augusta each year. She collaborated with designers and authors and all sorts of interesting people, and I love that she remained humble and gracious whenever I reached out to say congratulations on her latest success. To say I was proud of her is quite the understatement. I'm so glad her family chose an artsy photo of her to use with her obituary because it captures the spirit of Katherine—elegant, happy, and surrounded by the art and flowers she adored. (Here's a link to her obit if you're interested.)

Katherine once surprised me with the gift of a vintage Chinese teapot and tea set in a basket, and I loved it so much that I even wrote a short story about it in my book A Year of Teatime Tales.

The devastation caused by Helene seems to be in the news every day and will be for a while, and the grief I feel over the loss of my friend is no doubt being replicated many times over. I can only thank the Lord for letting our lives intersect during the sweet years that they did, and I trust He will comfort her family—and the families of so, so many others—in the days ahead. And I aim to use that Chinese tea set more in the days to come. I think Katherine would like that!