My current plan, as described in my last post, was to fly to Houston next Monday, get tests done, then fly out that same day and have them call me with the results. Well, M.D. Anderson said no to that plan. They don’t do CT scans without a follow-up visit with an oncologist. I asked for an exception. After all, I’ve been going there for eight years. But they said it was hospital policy.

I’m not griping. As a lawyer, I’m sure it’s some legal policy, or perhaps a business decision made long ago. But regardless, it complicates my already  already overly complicated life. For I’m having a shaky week due to chemo. Then, once I recover, it will be three days in Houston for tests and getting “the news.” Then it’s back home with a strong possibility of chemo the next week. 

That’s almost three weeks out of commission!

Meanwhile, it’s crunch time around here. My wife is doing testing for her students at school. Maddye’s 18th birthday is this week, and we’ve also got prom and senioritis to maneuver around. Ford is playing at the Norman Music Festival, so there are practices all the time. And the kids have a lot of homework.

Anyway, MD Anderson agreed to move my tests to Tuesday, rather than Monday, making it two days away rather than three. But they gave me this news as I was having chemo, and I couldn’t speak to my wife about it until later on that night. By the time we’d discussed it, decided she would join me, and changed my flights, that Tuesday appointment slot was gone. 

So it’s back to three days away. I’ll leave Monday and have tests. LeAnn will fly out on Tuesday. We’ll both see the doctor on Wednesday, then fly back.

Oh yeah, by the time I switched my flights back to Monday, I was outside the seven-day window. So the flight was going to cost another $100. But when I explained it all to Southwest Airlines, they honored my original ticket price.

Whew!

Part of it has to do with how long I’ve been actively dealing with serious illness. My eight-year cancer anniversary is coming up, for I first noticed a problem in May of 2001. The prayers began not too long after that.

It’s not just the length of time, those eight years, of course. It has more to do with the back-and-forth intensity of the battle, all the recurrences, surgeries, radiation, and chemo. Cancer came, but then it went away. It came back after about a year, but then went away again. Then it came back and went away for the third time. 

Third time’s a charm, right? Wrong. Cancer hit me for the fourth time in 2004 and they took my arm as a result. And then after three years, cancer came roaring back for the fifth time, and it seems to have no definitive plans to leave.

So I’ve had many crises during the last eight years, and prayers tend to spike during such times, like telephone calls at the end of American Idol. When news gets out that someone is sick or about to have surgery, people pray. What else can we do?

The amount of prayers I’ve received also has to do with the fact that I’m fortunate to know a lot of people. I try to keep up with friends from my hometown, high school, college, and past jobs. I’ve met a lot of people as a result of my current job as a lawyer and my work as a film critic, writer, poet, and band manager. And more importantly, my wife teaches at a middle school and knows half of Norman. She’s also the friendly, outgoing type, and that goes a long way. 

I also know a lot of people as a result of my time in church. My wife and I were quite involved at one particular church for many years. LeAnn was on staff briefly and I served in many roles. As a result, we met and became friends with dozens upon dozens of great people from good families, including many church staff members, most of whom are now scattered around the country.

Also, many people have come to know of my situation as a result of my cancer memoir (I Survived Cancer, but Never Won the Tour de France), my website (www.jimchastain.com), and this Life is Real series.

Anyway, all these things, as well as the ongoing madness that is terminal illness, have combined to create a situation that’s ripe for prayer. And as a result, I’ve been blessed with a faithful prayer community, one that would likely register in heavenly record books.

I’ve received a card from a men’s prayer group in Shreveport almost every month for the last seven years. They’ve prayed for me, the card says, usually without further amplification. I’m not exactly sure of my connection to these guys, but I’m thankful for them.

My boss’s Sunday School class has been praying for me diligently over the years. It’s one of the constancies in my life, something I can count on. In this crazy, mixed up world, that matters.

Many other churches pray for me regularly. My parents’ church, for example, and many Norman churches to which we are somehow connected. I’ll receive a card from the staff or a note from a pastor or an email from a church member that tells me they prayed. (One church never sends a card, but does send regular notices about their upcoming money raising efforts– but that’s another topic.) 

People stop me all the time and say they’ve been praying for me. Others tell me this via incredible hand-written letters, thoughtful cards, or encouraging email messages. Some have posted nice notes on this blog.

It’s quite a blessing, to know you’re being prayed for. It makes you feel connected, cared for, loved. It helps when you’re dealing with the loneliness and isolation of terminal illness or thoughts of being gone and forgotten.

Still, if I’m to be completely honest, I don’t always know what to do with prayer. After all these years, it still confuses me. Obviously, praying does not always, or even usually, give you the result you want. It often seems like a one-way activity, that is, one side does all the talking while the other does all the listening.  

It does help in efforts to decompress, however. And it does help sort things out. Poetry is a big part of my life, and I don’t see an appreciable difference between poetry and prayer in most instances, especially when you consider the Psalms, which are ancient poem/songs. (By the way, if you’re interested in this topic, I’ve written more about prayer in my cancer memoir.)

Even though prayer is more than a little mysterious, when people tell me they’ve been praying for me, or that they pray for me every day, or that they just prayed for me, I’m truly grateful. “Thank you for your prayers,” I say, for I know that a prayer means they care about me and took the time from their busy life to put those concerns into words.

I wanted to do the same thing here. And so, for all of you who’ve prayed for me, thank you! I may not be “well,” in the medical sense, but I’m still here.

They know the Chastains have a gloomy cloud floating overhead, one that is dark and threatening to drop a nasty storm on us at any time. And as  a result they think we’re much sadder than we are. 

Truth is, however, we’re doing well. We’re not walking around with our heads down, kicking rocks and stepping on spiders. We’re not all sad and gloomy, obsessing on the future.

Maddye doesn’t wake up and think, “Oh no, Dad!” LeAnn isn’t, I assure you, overwhelmed with thoughts of ”poor Jim.” Ford isn’t writing melancholy tunes with overtones of death or metaphors of a disintegrating father figure.

I’m not thinking about ”it” all the time. For where does that get me, really?

For now, we’re happy. We have each other. We have today. We have a crazy busy weekend, packed with fun things. And that’s more than enough.

Tonight, Ford will play an acoustic set or two at the Second Wind Coffee House on Buchanan Street in Norman, starting at 8 p.m.

On Saturday, LeAnn will be coaching Whittier’s Math Counts team at the State Finals, held at the Embassy Suites in Norman. Once again, she has one of the best teams in the state, and she’s very excited about their chances.

I’ll be speaking to a writer’s group on Saturday morning, then heading to Dallas to do a big house concert on Saturday night. It will be a night of music and poetry with my friends Billy Crockett and Nathan Brown.  Several of my friends are heading that way, and I can’t wait to see them!

Maddye’s weekend looks a little less exciting. She’s got a senior paper to work on. But Maddye has a way of finding fun.

So the Chastains are not sad. We are doing well, thank you. And we hope you are too.

I’m reminded of what it was like after my sister died. A week or so after the funeral, somebody came up to me all bright and cheery and asked, “Hey, how are you?” Not in the sense of how was I doing through all the tragedy, but in the “hi, how are you” way people great each other. This person obviously hadn’t been to the funeral and had forgotten all about my sister’s death. 

That hurt.

After a month or so, others who had been to the funeral began doing the same thing. “Hey man, how’s it going?” they’d say, all rosy and chipper. 

They’d moved on, you see. They weren’t as close to Karyn as I was. She wasn’t an everyday part of their life.

As time went on, only a handful of us, those who known Karyn for years and were still hurting, remained. I learned this while talking to LeAnn one day, perhaps three or four months after the funeral.

“Is there ever a time when she’s not right there, right there on your mind?” I asked.

“Honestly Jim,” she said. “I don’t think about her that much anymore.”

LeAnn hadn’t grown up with Karyn. She’d never lived with her or gone on vacation with her. She only saw Karyn a couple of times a year, during the holidays. 

This is the way it is with death. The initial shock may impact thousands. The aftershocks may affect a hundred or so.  But for a dozen, maybe only a handful, an entire way of life has crumbled and has to be slowly rebuilt.

Sometimes, during a funeral or on TV after some tragedy has occurred, someone will speak of “finding closure,” “healing,” or “moving on.” I’m always bothered when this occurs in the immediate aftermath of tragedy, when families are still in shock over the events.

We all want to heal, of course. But for those closest to the person who has died, the thought of “closure” or “moving on” can seem offensive, nonsensical, or ridiculous. We might even feel guilty about it. We wonder what it would say about our loved one if we were “over it” in a week.

And guilt has another side too. Some might actually pretend to be over it, because they think they should be or that’s what those close to them expect. Meanwhile, they’re still hurting deeply inside.

Closure, or more appropriately acceptance, will take differing amounts of time for different people. For some it may take more than a year before anything close to acceptance comes our way.

For those of you who know someone affected by a sudden tragic death, here are two things you can ask. First, what can I do for this person today? And, second, what can I do for them in a few weeks, after the rest of the world has inevitably moved on?     

I love this part of my life, talking to old friends. It’s so interesting to hear how their lives turned out and how they’ve diverged from mine. And it’s surprising to see what they’re up to now, how many kids they have, where they work, what they’re reading, what their religious and political points of view are, etc.   

But in doing all of this reconnecting, it occurred to me that many who are following this series (or beginning to follow it) do not know me at all.

“Who is this guy?” you’re probably thinking. “And why is The Oklahoman following him?

I guess it’s Ken Raymond’s job to tackle those questions in his newspaper articles. But I thought I should probably help him out a bit. I mean, it couldn’t hurt to give you a bio, at least a fairly brief sketch. Besides, I need to start practicing on my obituary.

I was born in Tahlequah, Oklahoma on December 9, 1963 to Jim and Sharon Chastain. I was their second child, the only boy out of four children. My sisters are, in order of their births, Lori, Cindy, and Karyn, who died tragically in a car accident at age twenty-one.

My family moved to Bartlesville when I was one, and we stayed there throughout my childhood. In fact my parents still live in “B-ville” to this day, in the same house we lived in since I was in fourth grade. I attended Will Rogers Elementary (about fifty steps from our back door), Madison Junior High, and Sooner High School. I graduated from Sooner High in 1982, the last year of its existence.

While I was growing up, my father worked for Phillips Petroleum Company in the computing division. Phillips employed about half the town it seems, and prospered as a result of having one of America’s great corporations located there. However, during my high school years, we went through those same job-related concerns so many people are having today, as Phillips seemed to have a new round of layoffs every Christmas.

My mother was, for the most part, a housewife, although she had a side job selling Luzier (a lesser-known brand of cosmetics). She also volunteered a lot at Highland Park Baptist Church where we attended services. But beyond that, she chased four kids around the house, took care of Dad, and did the sort of hard work moms do. I know for a fact that she made a heck of a lot of French toast for me over eighteen years.

Bartlesville was a pretty wealthy town, but my family lived in modest homes and drove unspectacular cars. My dad was what you might politely call ‘thrifty.” We were your typical middle income family, I suppose. We weren’t particularly churchy, but we did attend church regularly. Like most kids, I tried my best to avoid it.  

I was a sweet kid, they tell me, with a kind heart. I got along well with people for the most part, and I made friends easily. I believed strongly in fairness, so it bothered me when somebody was wronged. I had a soft spot for the underdog, still do, and I loved animals (the movie Bambi nearly killed me). I especially loved dogs, and therefore we always had a dog at the house. 

Sweet or not, I was also a stinker. That’s true of lots of boys I guess, but I seemed to consider stinkering a fine art. I loved pestering my sisters. I got spanked a lot at home and in elementary school, and, even though we don’t do that anymore, I usually deserved it. In junior high, I was too busy trying to keep my butt from getting whipped to get into too much trouble, but in high school I returned to my prankster ways. Whenever anything happened or went wrong, I was one of the “usual suspects” who was called to the principal’s office for questioning. Some of my high school exploits became rather notorious, I’m afraid to say.

I was a competitive kid when it came to games, grades, and sports. As most kids growing up in a fairly small town, I played sports throughout my youth. What else was there to do? I was pretty good during the early years, but less so during high school when it really counted. I was fast, but I didn’t particularly care for running. At Sooner High, I lettered in baseball, basketball, and football, but I only played football as a senior, choosing instead to work (first at Braums, then at Barlow Interiors) and put gas in my car. 

I was a reader from the beginning and spent a lot of time at the Bartlesville Public Library. I was one of those kids who was always reading a new book. One of my earliest memories was having my picture in the local newspaper for being a first grade “bookworm,” meaning I’d read something like one hundred books. Some of my favorites were My Side of the Mountain, Mr. Pudgins, the Henry Huggins series, the Hardy Boys mysteries, The Last of the Mohicans, Tom Sawyer, The Chronicles of Narnia, and anything by Shel Silverstein or Dr. Seuss, who continue to be two of my heroes to this day.

I also loved the movies. In fact from a very young age, I used to pretend my life was a movie. (Perhaps this explains all the troublemaking–I was searching for conflict to move the film along.) I remember walking down the street to the local theater regularly for Saturday matinees. I loved eating a giant green apple Jolly Rancher while watching a film.

I’ve always been a social person and a firm believer that friendships are key to happiness. Fortunately, I was blessed with a great group of  friends in junior high and high school. I hung around with about twenty guys and several girls from my class, along with some notables from the cool class ahead of me. On most weekends you’d find me with Greg, Kevin, Ghent, Terry, Gary, Sheldon, Polly, or whoever else happened to be tagging along with us. Meanwhile, I joined as many clubs as would have me. I went to every party I could find. I dated as much as the next guy, but I only had a few “girlfriends.” 

After high school I went to Oklahoma State University. I spent my freshman year in the dorms with several high school buddies. I made straight A’s that year, but met almost nobody and spent way too much time at Eskimo Joes. By the end of the year, I was so frustrated that I packed bags and went to live with my grandmother in Tahlequah. I attended summer school at Northeastern State, watched the Chicago Cubs on TV and contemplated staying in Tahlequah for good. But I decided instead to return to OSU for my sophomore year.  

On a whim I joined Delta Tau Delta fraternity, and after that my college experience improved dramatically. I began meeting people, including… girls! I became president of my pledge class and later of the entire fraternity. I met some of the greatest guys in the world, several of whom are still my best friends to this day. I still hung around at Eskimo Joes too much and for a time tried setting a world record for having the most fun. But overall I remained fairly balanced in my approach to school and life beyond college. I always took my grades seriously. And I worked at a video store during the last two years at school, which was no surprise to anyone, as one of my nicknames was Mr. Movie.

As far as my post-college plans were concerned, I decided I wanted to be one of three things: a film critic; a writer; or a lawyer. (I’m reminded of the SCTV episode where Martin Short plays a college freshman who wants to be a “hockey player or a circuit court judge.”) As I knew no writers and film critic is not really a career path in Oklahoma, I began steering toward the law. 

During my junior year, I met LeAnn when we were both participating in Varsity Review, a singing and dancing show. She was a member of Chi Omega sorority, and I knew several girls there. LeAnn was dating someone at the time, and I was dating someone else. But I noticed her. Later, after we’d both had breakups, we began dating. And as my senior year rolled around we became inseparable. 

I was somehow accepted into OU law school and moved to Norman in 1986. LeAnn was still a senior and in the midst of completing her studies to become a teacher, so she remained in Stillwater for a semester. After that, she obtained a student teaching position at Norman High and joined me in Norman, where she lived with two of our dear friends. We married in the summer after my first year in law school and moved into our first apartment, along with Winston, our beloved cocker spaniel.

While I was busy at law school, LeAnn decided to pursue a Masters Degree at the University of Oklahoma in Mathematics. Meanwhile, we also got involved with a local church and made many new friends, as most of our college friends had moved. After obtaining our degrees, we decided to make Norman our home. We had our first child, Madison, in 1991, followed by a son, Ford, in 1994. 

I began my legal career working at a small, upstart law firm that relied entirely on one client. My job was to write title opinions and to do most of the research and writing, as well as help out with litigation now and then. But that job ended when we lost our main client and my boss closed up shop, before killing himself, accidentally or not.

During this period of time, LeAnn decided to forego a full time job to focus on raising our kids. She did, however, teach math classes at night at various colleges in the Oklahoma City metro. Being a people person, she was always ready to go, go, go when I got home, while I was ready to relax.

I moved on to a medium-sized law firm in downtown Oklahoma City. It was a good job for the most part, and I made some lifelong friends. We had twenty lawyers at one point, but the firm relied a lot on the oil and gas industry and eventually ran into hard times. I was working downtown at this firm when the Murrah bombing occurred, just a few blocks away. Not long after that, my boss and good friend Doyle Bunch died in a scuba diving accident. The firm began splitting up soon afterward and was never quite the same.

As the kids began getting older and were attending school, LeAnn increased her work load. She continued teaching college math classes, but she eventually took a job at our church, where she helped with adult education and organized various small group studies. I also became involved at church, teaching adult classes and serving in several key positions, including, if you can believe it, deacon! (”What in the world was the staff thinking?” I’m sure you’re asking.)

I took a tumultuous job at the Oklahoma Insurance Department in 1996. A year and a half later, I moved on, accepting a position in 1997 as a Judicial Assistant to Judge Gary Lumpkin at the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, the same job I have today. There I help determine whether or not criminal defendants have received a fair trial in the state district court system.

While holding down a full time job, I began working on my writing career. I’d been writing poetry for a long time, but became more earnest about it after my sister died in 1992. I wrote more, read more, and began submitting poems here and there. I also became interested in screenplays. I took several classes and read all the right books. My second attempt at a screenplay finished in the top ten percent at the Austin Film Festival one year.

I began writing film reviews for The Norman Transcript in 1996 and have continued to do so ever since, although I’ve slowed down quite a bit recently. My reviews have appeared in numerous publications, and at one point I was writing close to one hundred reviews a year. I’ve also been a freelance contributor to the Oklahoma Gazette, Oklahoma Today, and numerous magazines.

In 2001, at the age of thirty-seven, I found a tiny little lump in the triceps muscle of my right arm. That lump turned out to be a very aggressive and rare type of cancer, and it eventually cost me my right arm in 2004. I chronicled my crazy battle with cancer in a memoir entitled, I Survived Cancer, but Never Won the Tour de France, which was published in 2006. That same year my first book of poems, Like Some First Human Being, was published.

In September of 2007, cancer, which had been out of my life for three years, came roaring back. I was diagnosed with colon cancer that had spread to my, gulp, liver. The outlook was not good. After many rounds of chemo we have been unable to shrink the tumors enough to give me a shot at a possibly life-saving surgery. Cancer has now spread to my lungs, and I’ve been told that my life expectancy is “months” rather than years.

In the midst of these challenges, I’ve continued writing. In the summer of 2008, Antidotes & Home Remedies, my second book of poems, was published. The book is a combination of health related poems and some of my “greatest hits.” I’ve also been working a book of prose, some new poems, and this series.

I’ve spared you some of the gory details, but that’s basically it.

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.

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.

In the early days it was Sparky, Bimbo, Sabrina.

Then Winston (still in the Dog Hall of Fame) and Daisy.

And now it’s Gracie, our beloved Golden Retriever.

I have a great group of supporters who’ve ”been there for me” throughout my cancer trials and tribulations, and Gracie sits (or perhap lays, snoring) at or near the very top of that list.

She’s always there, waiting to brighten up my day. All I have to do is call her.   

She’s my steadfast friend who stays by my side when I’m sick in bed, following chemo.

I often wonder about people who have cancer, but don’t have a good support group. I see them from time to time at the Cade Cancer Center in Oklahoma City or at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, making their way to the next appointment, and I wonder how they do it alone. I’m not sure I could.

I have no great advice for these people. Cancer can be so God-awful lonely even when you’re surrounded by friends.

But I can say this: I hope they have a good pet. Or to be more specific, I hope they have a pet like Gracie, a companion who’s never, ever in a bad mood, never too tired to play, never too busy to give you the time of day. Gracie may not make it all the way up to Winston status, but if she keeps cuddling up by me after chemo, she has a shot.

She’s cuddling up next to me right now, but she seems a little less peaceful and serene than normal. That’s because Gracie had a really bad day. 

LeAnn had booked her for a shampoo at a local pet place I’d rather not name. I dropped her off in the morning, then headed off to work. The plan, which we’ve done many times, was a shampoo, nothing more. The kids would pick her up after school, and Gracie would be all fluffy and smelly-good when we all met at home.

But things didn’t go as planned. It was just after 4 p.m. and I was still at work when my cell phone rang.

“Is this Mr. Chastain? Mr. Jim Chastain?” the caller asked.

“Yes.”

“Are you the owner of Gracie?” she asked, a bit too formally.

“Gracie? Yes….”

“Well this is Geena (not her real name) over at Pets Marred (not its real name).” (I’m paraphrasing too.)

“Oh yes. My kids should be there any minute.”

“Okay… Well we have a problem.”

My heart sank.

Please God, I begged. Whatever it is, just let her be alive.  

“A problem? What is it?”

“Well, you see we had another Golden in here and, uhh… they kind of got mixed up.”

I’m nearly hyperventilating while she’s speaking. Was Gracie okay, that’s all I wanted to know.

“I was in the middle of shaving her when we figured it out,” Geena explained.

“Shaving her? So she’s okay?”

“Oh yes. She’s fine. But I thought she was the other dog and I started shaving her. I’m really sorry. It’s all my fault.”

“So she’s shaved?” I asked. ”Like really shaved?”

Who shaves a Golden Retriever?

“Well partially shaved. But when I figured it out I stopped. I’m so sorry.”

“Well, it is what it is,” I philosophized. “Nothing we can do about it now. I hope you’re not charging me.”

“Oh no,” she said.

I can’t remember how we finished the conversation. I was too busy wondering how bad Gracie looked. I mean, being terminal, I was able to keep things in perspective. It certainly wasn’t the worst thing in the world. It was just hair. People make mistakes. They had even offered a free grooming.

But then again, Gracie is such a beauty. It was going to be a little sad to see her “partially shaved.”

Maddye called a bit later as I was driving home.

“You’re going to have to see this,” she said.

“Is it bad?” I asked.

“It’s kind of like she has a mullet.”

I arrived at home just after five and found Gracie lying in my bed, looking puzzled and a bit sad. Her long beautiful coat was gone, except on her front legs, the only place where she hadn’t been sheared. It was like Gracie’s head and front legs had been placed on a sheep. If it had been July or August, this “partial shave” would have at least kept her comfortable. But this was early February. 

Like I said, it wasn’t the worst thing that ever happened. So she’d lost some hair. I’d been losing hundreds of ‘em during the last few weeks. So she’d look a bit silly. I, the hairless, one-armed, near albino, look a bit silly too. 

At least we’d give people something to talk about when I took her out for a walk. 

On days like these, I can’t help but smile. Yes, I know, I’m terminally ill. But what does that matter today? Even though the future looks cloudy, I can still pause to be thankful for what I have right now.

So what am I thankful for today?

I’m thankful that we made it through another round of chemo last week. Chemo days are hard on our family, especially my wife, who must play the role of single parent, but we somehow managed once again. And now, a non-chemo week is awaiting with plenty of sun and opportunities to enjoy life.

I’m thankful we survived last week’s ice/sleet storm without any major catastrophes. No splintering trees. No power outages. No car accidents. No slip and falls. It could easily have been otherwise.

I’m thankful for my neighbors, the Hawleys, who brought my family a great meal last Wednesday despite all the ice and despite the fact that they’ve endured another loss in their family. Good neighbors (and friends like the Normiles who brought us a meal today) are such a blessing during hard times.

I’m thankful for my kids. Raising teenagers is far from easy, but these are pretty good days in that regard (knock on wood). Maddye is making plans to leave us soon. She’ll head to Stillwater in the summer for college. I’m proud of her, and I’m thankful for every second I get to spend with her. Ford will play at the Norman Music Festival this summer, and he’s in a good place right now with friends. He’s a good friend to me.

I’m thankful for a letter I received this week concerning this series. I won’t get into it here, but the letter encouraged me tremendously.

I’m thankful for my father-in-law, Terry Sims, who calls us every weekend with an offer to fix whatever has broken in the last week and then, after the call, follows through. That is one of the biggest blessings I can name.

And I’m thankful for three more months of life. (After my trip to Houston two weeks ago, I’m reasonably sure that I have at least that much time.) That’s ninety days of memories. Yes, some of that will include bad chemo days, but during the rest of the time who knows what wonders may come our way?   

But I had a brief moment of semi-okayness, so I checked my email. Some wonderful notes were in there, and they cheered me up, despite how crappy I feel. I heard from two of my best friends, one who was best man in my wedding and another who is on the short list of the kindest, most giving people I know. A family who doesn’t know me, but knows LeAnn, wrote to praise her. A friend from college wrote to encourage me and to tell me how this series had helped her reconnect with someone dear. My sister sent some good news. Someone I don’t know offered a small act of kindness. Someone else wrote about Maddye. And I heard from a writer friend who wrote a moving note about making memories.

Chemo days are not the best ones for making memories. I’m challenged by my own words to remember that life is real and to do your best to make a memory every day.

But I’ve done pretty good with this today. For today my wife drove me through a sleet and ice storm so we could get chemo over with. And today I reminded my son of a song he started the other day, but never finished. He started working on it again and it has great potential. And today I received the notes I’ve mentioned, which were memories for me and hopefully for those who sent them.