Regarding Karyn
Yesterday was my sister Karyn’s birthday. She would have been 37, but she died in a tragic car accident at the age of 21.
It’s hard to imagine Karyn at 37. She seems instead to be frozen in time. To me she’ll always be that smiling, somewhat naive 21 year old who was just beginning to find her place in the world.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how fortunate I am to be able to participate in this series, to put a voice to this strange journey I’m on. Few people have had an opportunity like this. It’s a big responsibility though, to be a sort of representative for people who are marching knowingly toward death, so I’m giving it all I can.
We’re all going to die, of course. Every last one of us. Oh, medical science might delay that for a few years, but still the end result is pretty much a sure thing.
Our deaths seem to fall into two distinct categories. Some people–folks like me, my friend Tom Dowdy, and my great-grandfather–are told that we are heading in that direction, that our time on earth is drawing to a close.
Others, like Karyn and my friend Donya Hicks Dunn, just die. Suddenly, painfully quick, without any real time to say goodbye. I’m sure many of you who have experienced that sort of jarring loss would give anything to have what I have, just a little more time.
Over the next few days, I’m going to be writing a tribute to four people who have left us. Starting today I’ll talk about Karyn. Next, I’ll turn to Donya, Tom, and my great-grandfather, Bige Hensley. For those of you who knew any of these people, stay tuned.
Karyn’s death was as tragic as anything I’ve experienced. She was my little sister, eight years behind me, last of the Chastain family singers as it were. She was also one of the sweetest people I’ve ever known. I’m not sure if she had a bad bone in her body. I was protective of her, as big brothers are, but I didn’t really have to be. Almost everyone who knew Karyn liked her. What wasn’t to like?
At the time of her death, she had just been accepted to nursing school. She had an appointment in Muskogee that particular day, so she said goodbye to her husband and twin girls and headed off from their home in Tahlequah. On her way back she apparently fell to sleep, veered over the center line, and ran head on into another car, dying instantly. (The other folks lived, thank God.)
I was picking up Maddye, who was then just one year old, when I received the news. My mom had called LeAnn, and LeAnn had to tell me. She did it quickly. “Jim, your mother just called. Karyn was in a car wreck this afternoon and was killed.”
Bam! Just like that, she was gone. To this day it remains the biggest shock of my life.
The next few days were a blur, like the remnants of a nightmare. My parents. The twins. A Hearst. My sisters. An awful car ride. The funeral home. The funeral. The trip to the cemetary. A police salute. The burial. Then left alone, trying to make sense of it all.
I’ve never been able to make much sense of it. And if you think you have, please do me a favor and don’t share those thoughts with me.
But whether or not there was any point in it, I can tell you this: Karyn’s death played a key role in my becoming a writer.
I had been writing poetry since junior high, if not before. Most of my poems were the sort of stuff you’d expect from a teenage boy: love poems about this or that girl who made my heart go pitter patter. They may not have been great, in a literary sense, but I loved writing them. And I loved thinking that maybe, just maybe, I’d share them with the right person someday.
Only remnants of those poems remain. This was before we all owned computers, and nobody had ever shared with me the wonders of journaling. The poems were handwritten on single sheets of paper and stuffed into this folder or that, the thought being that I would someday get organized. But that never happened. Perhaps if you carefully went through my old bedroom closet, or the bottom of some desk drawer, or the boxes in my parents’ attic, you might find some of them.
But as time went by and I got married, became a lawyer, and had kids, I put poetry aside to become “serious.” For a time, poetry disappeared from my life. But then Karyn died, and poetry, that old friend, came back into my life and tapped me on the shoulder.
It had been nine months since the accident, and Karyn’s birthday was coming up. My folks were still in deep grief, even though the rest of the world had moved on. I myself was still processing it all, and so I began working on a Karyn poem to help in that regard. My thought was to keep the poem from being overtly sad, but instead to write a tribute to Karyn and to how important she had been to others.
I finished the poem, called “The Rainbow,” then gave it to my mother as a gift. She loved it, and shared it with family and friends. Rather than having to tell them something to remind them of Karyn, she now had a poem to do that work for her. And every year on Karyn’s birthday, she sends it out to friends as a tribute to her youngest child, her dear friend whom she lost suddenly and without warning.
“The Rainbow” is not my best poem of all time. It has a sing song rhythm, it rhymes, and it is a bit sentimental. But I’m not sure that anything I’ve written has had a greater impact. Plus, the response it received helped to remind me of my own writing dreams. Soon afterward I made a conscious decision to start moving my career from that of lawyer to that of writer.
For what it’s worth, here it is.
The Rainbow
As a child, you were a present,
A gift from God above,
A promise full of sweetness,
A package filled with love.
As a daughter, you were an angel,
A companion from on high.
With pride we watched you mount your wings,
and take off toward the sky.
As a wife, you were a diamond,
A sparkling, precious stone,
A treasure worthy to display,
A priceless jewel to own.
As a mom, you were a blanket,
A cover for the night,
You gave us warmth and calmed our fears,
We loved to hold you tight.
As a sister, you were a flower
A bloom in life’s bouquet
From a tiny seed, we watched you grow
And blossom on your way.
As a friend, you were an anchor,
A foundation in the gale,
You held us fast when storms came through,
You enabled us to sail.
As a memory, you are a rainbow,
Shining high above the plain,
An eternal sign of beauty,
Which follows after rain.
On your birthday, oh my sister,
Mother, daughter, friend and wife,
We take a moment from our tears
To celebrate your life.
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Comments
Hi Jim,
As you may remember Karyn was in the Youth Group at Highland Park Baptist Church when my husband Jason was Youth Director there. Even tough Karyn was 20 and had travelled past “youth group” age at the time of her death, I remember how profoundly affected I was by her accident and your family’s intense grief. I am not sure that I ever fully expressed it then, so I wanted to express it now.
She was a beautiful girl with a precious smile and it broke my heart that she left this world so young with 2 little girls behind. I was a young mother too at the time and I felt your mother’s grief and wondered if something like that ever happened to me, could I ever recover and go on…?
I am not sure that I could, but they did and I admire them.
I just wanted to write today because I thought that you might like for someone else who knew her to express their heart about her…. I remember her pretty dark hair and did she have blue eyes? “Karyn”….what a beautiful name..what a beautiful person!
When our oldest sister “Rainie” was in the hospital for the last time, I knew this time it was different. I was talking to the pastor and he said you have a right to call a unity meeting which we did for the next day, there were at least 20 of us in the room and one brother on the phone. We found out that they were constantly giving her dialysis when they knew there was no chance of her coming back to us, all of her organs were shutting down on her and the procedures were non productive. It was decided by all of us to let her go and informed her friends and family that the doctors would be taking her off the ventilator the next day, so that they had one last chance to say goodbye.
The hardest part for me was staying in the room until the end, she wasn’t just our sister, she was our mother, our protector, our friend and now that it I would be the oldest surviving sister of this clan of 13 brothers and sisters, I felt the need to be with her when she started out on her journey to the Creator and our ancestors, because none of my brothers or sisters could handle watching her die. She is dearly missed.
Thank you for sharing your Sister Karyn and Rainbow poem.
the rainbow was very inspirational to me because when i was 10 years old i lost a brother and sister to a drowning accident and ever since then not a day goes by without me thinking what their lives would’ve be like and times we would’ve shared be it good or bad. just wanted to share that with you and i will be praying for you and yours so that god can give you and yours the will to survive.