Jim Chastain

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Regarding Donya

This is the second of four tributes I’m writing about people in my life who have died. The first two are about my sister Karyn and my friend Donya Hicks Dunn, who both died suddenly, with little or no time to reflect on it. The final two are about my friend Tom Dowdy and my great-grandfather, who were both diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer and had about six months to reflect on what they were facing.

Donya Dunn was one of the most beautiful people I have ever known. That she was a physical beauty, the stuff that Miss America pageants are made of, cannot be denied. But she had an inner beauty that matched, or more likely surpassed, what she had been blessed with on the outside. Anyone who knew her will attest to this fact.

I first met, or became aware, of Donya, then Donya Hicks, while I was in junior high school, specifically Madison Junior High in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. Donya was in the class ahead of me, but in reality she was less than two months older. She was a cheerleader, so of course I came to know who she was early on. Older, a cheerleader, strikingly pretty. That was pretty much the trifecka for a junior high dope like me.

Some of my junior high friends, like Polly and Mollie, were cheerleaders, and I played sports. So I had the opportunity to interact with Donya fairly regularly. This was especially true in high school, when the sports teams were all one, rather than divided by grade. Basketball and football games. After school practices. Pep rallys. I was there. Donya was there. Before long, she even knew my name!

Donya and I weren’t close friends. We were just friends. She dated a couple of my high school buddies though, so I got to know her a little better through them.

Girls this pretty are often unapproachable, but Donya was not that way. I remember one incident in particular that bears this out. I was a high school junior and was driving around in my car with a friend who lived in Donya’s neighborhood. While passing her house, we saw her outside and stopped to say hi. She asked what we were doing, and we told her. Nothing. Driving around. Thinking about heading over to a local hangout.

“Mind if I come?” she asked.

Was she kidding? Would we mind hanging out with one of the coolest girls in Bartlesville?

“Uh, sure,” I said, as calmly as I could, hoping my voice hadn’t cracked. And then, as she went inside to tell her folks, I’m sure my friend and I slapped high fives.

After high school, Donya’s life and mine had this curious way of crossing. She went off to Oklahoma State for college. I went there too a year later. She became a member of Chi Omega sorority. I became a Delt and started dating one of her sorority sisters, LeAnn Sims, whom I later married. As a result of these connections, I would see Donya at Chi Omega parties or functions, and we’d always stopped to chat for a few minutes.

After graduation I headed off to Norman to go to law school. Meanwhile, Donya did the same thing at the University of Tulsa. That’s right. We both went to high school in Bartlesville, then college at OSU. We both joined fraternities/sororities where we ran into each other frequently. Then we both became lawyers. The similarities were piling up. But our mirror lives would soon cross paths in at least two more significant ways.    

During my first year in law school, I roomed with one of my fraternity pals, John Dunn from Woodward. I don’t think John and Donya even knew each other in college. But a few years after I got married, John and Donya began dating. It was so strange. Here were two people I knew really well from completely different parts of my life, and they were suddenly hanging out together. 

Anyway, John and Donya eventually married, and LeAnn and I attended their beautiful wedding. I can still remember it to this day, because so many people from different parts of my life were there.

After that, I saw a little bit less of Donya. We’d meet at some lawyer’s event or an Oklahoma State game, and when we did Donya would always stop to chat. She made the time. I admired that quality in her.

Our last meeting was one I’ll never forget, one last Jim and Donya connection that now seems almost too weird to be true. It was just a few weeks before she died. We passed each other at an OSU basketball game, the Final Four in San Antonio. She stopped, of course, to chat. She and John had just had another child, their fourth I believe, and this was one of her first times to get out. She looked a little run down and said she still wasn’t one hundred percent. She knew about my cancer battle and asked about that. I said I had an appointment coming up that concerned me. We then parted ways, ending with a hug and a wish that both of our health situations would soon improve. 

Donya’s death was a complete shocker, and, as I understand it, the cause was about as rare as the cancer that had attacked my body. Her infant apparently got scarlet fever, and the strep germ from that illness somehow found its way to her bloodstream, resulting in toxic shock. Donya died within two days.

I attended the funeral, and it was a heartbreaker. Those same friends I’d seen at John and Donya’s wedding, people I knew from so many parts of my life, were gathered again, and everyone looked completely devastated. I’ll never forget the bagpipes that played.      

Soon after, I was facing a battle of my own, the same one I’d discussed with Donya. The cancer had returned, and doctors were now recommending the amputation of my arm.

I wrote a poem about Donya in the wake of these events. I say it was about Donya, but it was also about my own health issues and the loss of my sister. The poem contemplates dying at a young age, before your time as it were. I thought about how certain deaths become almost larger than life itself. And as I wrote it, I kept thinking of Donya, now gone, but frozen in time. I couldn’t help but think of all of our connections, our parallel lives, and then wonder how it would all turn out for me.

Now, as I too face death at a relatively young age, I read my Donya poem and it takes on a whole new meaning, as if I, who had once sent it out to her, am now receiving it back.

So here it is:

To Die Young
(in memory of Donya)

To die young is to stay young forever,
remembered fondly at your peak,
a distant mountain on a hazy horizon.

To die young is to be revered,
a tribute to the pain of life and love,
a thorned rose for those who walk the garden.

To die young is to be forgiven of all sins,
absolved of mistakes or hint of failure,
beneficiary of doubts, big and small.

To die young is to stir the emotions,
making loved ones weep as never before,
yet smile with bittersweet reminiscences.

To die young is to become poetry,
to inspire music, literature, theater, art,
the echoes of hard truths revisited.

To die young is to be mourned
by those who before did not understand
and somehow then a catalyst for change.

To die young is to go on a journey,
exploring faraway places pondered for ages,
looking back and waving in that silent way.

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