Terri Jean "T.J.” Parker-Kerns

This is about our daughter Terri Jean “T. J.” Parker-Kerns, submitted with everlasting love by her mom and dad.

Terri Jean Parker was an inspiration and spiritual guide to more people than she ever realized during her short time on this earth. She began her journey at Portland’s Emanuel Hospital on January 14, 1957 and left this world from Emanuel Hospital on January 23, 2007. The eldest of six children born to Jim and Elaine Parker, her siblings are: Vicki, Valerie, Timothy, Philip, and Jason. She was a delightful child and a gifted student. She graduated on the dean’s list from Portland State University’s Honors program in 1982 with a double major in business and math. After having worked for several years as the controller of a high-tech company, she quit the corporate world of accounting to have a more creative outlet in running her own business, Summit Shades, out of her West Linn, Oregon home. As one of the six co-founding families of the South Metro Jewish Congregation, she helped in creating a spiritual platform for her children and surrounding community. 

When she was in the ninth grade, she suffered a cerebral aneurysm that required brain surgery. Terri (or T. J. as she became known in her adult life), made a contract with God at the time of this ordeal, asking to be allowed to live to have children and see them grow up. In return, God could take her when she was fifty years old, a seemingly ripe age to a fifteen-year-old. The contract has been fulfilled. She married Tom Kerns in 1983 and gave birth to two amazing children, Jennifer and Jamieson. Her children were her delight and she was involved in their lives as a deeply loving and unconditionally supportive mother. In a full-circle completion of her divine contract, she died as the result of the aneurysm’s return in the exact same place. This happened nine days after her fiftieth birthday and shortly before her youngest child’s twenty-first birthday. 

The thirty-five additional years that T. J. lived on this earth were a benefit for many. She lived her life with contagious joy and love. Adored by those all ages, people were attracted to her brilliance and grace. The celebration of life for T. J. was attended by over six hundred people. A sense of great loss is, and will always be, shared by her family, friends, neighbors, business associates, spiritual contacts, charity associates, yacht club members, yoga partners, bowling teams, Mah Jongg group, SMJ congregation, and all who basked in her radiance. 

T. J. was eternally grateful to Doernbecher for her successful brain surgery and was an active participant in The Friends of Doernbecher. Her name is on a brick right in front of the entrance to the new Doernbecher building that was built after she was a patient. The long, thick, beautiful head of hair that was completely cut off for her brain surgery when she was fifteen was one of four donations she made to Locks of Love for cancer patients. A regular blood and aphaeresis donor, T. J. felt that since she had been blessed with the gift of life, it was her duty to pass that gift on. And that is exactly what she did in life and after passing. She gave the ultimate gift when she became an organ donor after her family was informed of her lack of brain activity following her second aneurysm. 

Many have been given life, love, or benefited in some extraordinary way as a result of T. J.’s journey on this earth. She was one with life. She taught by example to relish the simple pleasures of nature such as a sunset, a rainbow, or the affinity to water and truly lived with awe and gratitude. 

“The horizon meets the sea / Earlier than sunset / But morning is just around the bend / I’ll find you along the way.” by Jennifer Kalish Kerns, 2007

Written by Jim and Elaine Parker, her parents