Help honor Karen Walker, a nurse who gave to everyone

This beautiful mom, sister and nurse left us Dec. 11, 2024 after a lengthy battle with kidney and heart disease. She was 70 years old. We are raising funds for her funeral and memorial.

She helped so many others throughout her life, and now her family needs help to send her off the way she deserves.

Karen Walker was a 40+ year dialysis nurse and helped countless patients. As a dialysis nurse, she spent time with her patients, talked with them and listened to their stories during the hundreds of hours they would spend at the units where Karen worked.

She took care of our mother and father as they grew older and sufferered from COPD and Alzheimer's, respectively.

In Chicago, she welcomed troubled kids into her home when they needed a place to stay. She truly was the model of a caregiver.

Karen was a Licensed Practical Nurse and a veteran dialysis nurse. She could often be seen in her familiar nurses "scrubs" uniform, like this one.

Karen, far right, loved her family of dialysis nurses, technicians and staff. Yvette's church brought donuts by the dialysis unit once.

She loved to have fun with friends and family.

Karen, right, and her daughter, Ashlie, would always hang out together.

Karen, right, loved a good costume party! She once wore an Afro wig and ethnic print to a Halloween party at Yvette's house in Oklahoma. Her friend and fellow nurse, Tonya, accompanied her.

And she loved the family pets, especially her dog, Agape. Agape means "unconditional love" and Karen gave that to everyone.

Here, she and Yvette painted our dog, Lemon, and cat, Gato, at a paint-and-sip event in Oklahoma.

We are raising funds for her funeral and memorial.

We ask for donations to help towards gatherings and travel funds for two memorials, one in Oklahoma City and one in Chicago. These two cities were home bases for Karen most of her life.

Karen did not have life insurance and spent her savings on health care and prescriptions.

She preferred to have her ashes interred at St. Augustine of Canterbury Episopal Church in Oklahoma City, where the ashes of her mother and father lie.

The three of us: Yvette, left, Karen, top, and Ashlie in 2003 in Chicago.

If you are unable to donate, we ask for prayers for peace, especially for her daughter, Ashlie, her sister, Yvette and her extended family and friends.