Our beloved mother, sister, wife and Nana, Teena Renee West passed away on September 19th, 2024, in Bastrop, TX at the age of 66. Teena loved her family. She loved shopping, painting her nails, and chatting for hours.

The first of four children to Gerald Leighton and Kathryn Madelene West, Teena was born in Houston, TX on October 5, 1957. As the oldest child, she thought she ruled the roost and always said she was her mother’s favorite. Her younger siblings always told her she was adopted. Teena graduated from J. Frank Dobie High School in 1976, where she made lasting bonds. Always a lover of fashion, one of Teena’s first jobs was as a model for Foley’s department stores. She was the first of her sisters to get her hair styled with the Farrah Fawcett wings, and there are countless glamor shots of her throughout the years. Teena loved her sleep. According to her siblings, she would never wake up on Christmas mornings, and they would all have to wait around on her for the festivities to begin. This love for staying up late and sleeping in continued into adulthood as her grandchildren also had to wake her up to open presents on Christmas mornings.

Teena married her high school sweetheart, Charles Larson after graduation in 1976 and together they had one son, Michael. Though they divorced when their son was young, they remained friends and stayed in each others lives through new marriages for both, raising a son together who learned love, strength, responsibility, and open mindedness. Teena and her son had a special bond and they leaned on each other through the years. Teena worked hard to raise her son as a single mother, and was proud of her accomplishments when she worked for Hand and Associates until her retirement in 2005. After her retirement, Teena moved to be with her future husband, Steve Cox, in central Texas. Steve and Teena lived a slow, charming life in the country together for many years where she had a greenhouse, a green thumb, and a pet goat named Goaty. In 2016, Teena took on a new role as Nana, and cherished every minute. She traveled in to Houston every other week, and would stay for a week at a time to care for her grandson in his first year of life. They developed a close bond that even the throes of dementia couldn’t touch.

In 2018, at the age of 59, Teena began a slow decline as she was diagnosed with frontal temporal lobe dementia. The once vibrant, sassy woman slowly slipped away over the next seven years. Teena became Nana to two more grandchildren, and she loved them every bit as much as the first. Though she may have lost her ability to express herself in words, her face lit up when she saw them or heard them speak. We will always remember who she was before this disease began to steal her away. We are grateful for the pictures and videos we have of her. Her grandchildren will remember her and how much she loved them. She should have had more time with them. She should have had more good years with them. We are grateful for what we did have, and we are grateful that she is finally free.

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