Zena Khemiri

When we think of Zéna, we think of her singing, dancing, playing the piano, welcoming friends, praying, and caring for others whenever she saw a need, whether it was a neighbor or someone she had just met. Her biggest joy in life was being a mother and raising her five children. Above all she loved God. Zéna’s strong faith, which was ignited when she was seventeen, was a testament to those she touched throughout her life. Her life reflected her abiding faith in God’s promise that nothing “will be able to separate [her] from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.“ Zéna’s life, which began in Hamburg, Germany, included living in England, Canada, and Marietta, Ohio, a beautiful little city she loved. The last almost-thirty years, she enjoyed her beloved Earthship, Casa Tunisia, on the mesa just outside Taos, New Mexico. 

Zéna Lillian Khemiri was born in 1931 in Hamburg to Dr. Tahir and Lillian Khemiri. Zéna’s Tunisian father and British mother met while her mother was a missionary in Morocco, and they married in Cairo in 1927. While her father was a visiting professor of languages and linguistics at Hamburg University, Zéna was born and named after her Tunisian grandmother. Along with her older brothers, Michel (deceased) and Peter, and younger sister, Tunis Ellen (deceased), the family was forced to remain in Hamburg when WWII began. Thus, Zéna experienced the war first-hand, an experience that was never far from her mind and has made her grateful for life’s simple pleasures (a warm bath, a sunset, butter on her bread). After the war, when she was 14, her family settled in Somerset, England. After completing school in Weston-Super-Mare, Zéna attended nursing school and worked at the London Hospital. At 17, Zena gave her life to Christ, and she was grateful to learn and grow through the teaching of Dr. Martin Lloyd Jones, Westminster Chapel, London. In her early twenties, Zéna moved to Canada with her sister and was an obstetrics nurse, first in Montreal, then in Toronto. While in Montreal she met Hajo Kolshorn, a recent immigrant from Germany. They married in 1957 and in 1961 welcomed their long-awaited first child. Four more followed in the next eight years. They eventually settled in Marietta, Ohio, where they raised their five children. Zéna’s nursing skills were again put into action when she and Hajo opened a nursing home together, the Marie Antionette. Zéna’s care for the elderly was unparalleled. She wanted them surrounded by color, activity, and wonderful care. She organized outings for them and made sure that their physical needs were well met. One doctor commented that prior to her running the home, he’d always leave smelling like a nursing home, but not after she took over maintaining her high cleanliness standards. 

Zéna cared not only for the elderly at her nursing home but more widely for the children of Marietta. When she realized that the junior high school needed activities during the lunch hour, she organized volunteers and events to make the students’ time fun. In addition to this substantial nursing and volunteer work (for which she was awarded Citizen of the Year by the Civitan Club), Zéna worked hard to give all she could to her children, including taking them out of school to travel and learn about their origins and family in Europe and North Africa for four months in 1975. Prior to her children attending college (today’s “gap year”), Zéna made it possible for all five to attend Capernwray Bible school in England, Germany, and Austria and to travel. If Zéna had chosen her dream career she would have studied music and been an opera singer. Each year she loved singing in Handel’s Messiah at Marietta College.

After her children were grown, she retired to Taos, New Mexico, living in her beloved, beautiful Earthship designed and built by her son Peter. She loved this home and welcomed countless people there over the years. During this time she also traveled, visiting her children and grandchildren spread out all over the U.S., her brother in Texas with whom she also traveled in Europe, her sister and friends in England, and friends and relatives in Canada and Germany, and even spent time in Israel and Palestine.

Zéna’s life has been a tremendous journey both physically and spiritually. She lived it fully and well, always grateful for God’s gifts including people and beauty, and loved all with whom she came in contact. Surrounded by family and friends in her home, she peacefully left us February 17, almost having reached her 92nd birthday.

Zéna’s legacy includes her five children, Andreas in Seattle, Elizabeth (Mark) in Asheville, Peter (Alisa) in Taos, Zizi in Maine, and Johannes (Catrina) in Cincinnati and her eight grandchildren, Jessica (Kevin), Alex, and Sophia Harvey, Corban, Arin, Jonah, and Neve Kolshorn, and Jasper Vlaun. She also leaves many dear friends and the countless people she touched throughout her long life. 

In a biography made with her dear friends Betsy and Roger Kalter (whose baby, Robert, she helped deliver at home!), Zéna concluded with words from Psalm 33, which now seem so reflective of her in life and now in her new life:

 Sing joyfully to the Lord, you righteous;

 It is fitting for the upright to praise him. 

Praise the Lord with the harp;

 make music to him on the ten-stringed lyre.

Sing to him a new song; play skillfully, and shout for joy.

Zéna lived out the words of Dr. Lloyd Jones: she knew and enjoyed God, God was the center of her life, the soul of her being, and the source of her greatest joy.

Thank you to Red Willow Hospice for their wonderful care of Zena. 

Services will be Friday, February 24, viewing from 5:30 - 6:00, followed by a celebration service at 6:00pm at Rivera Funeral Home, 818 Paseo del Pueblo Sur, Taos

Arrangements by Rivera Family Funeral Home. To share a memory, please visit our website at www.riverafuneralhome.com