I met Megan Dunyon when we were ten years old, and her family moved into my ward. She was the first person I had ever met who shared my name. She even shared my middle name! Her family called us "Megan Elizabeth I" and "Megan Elizabeth II." I was "I" because I was a few months older. She and I became fast friends. We immediately started having sleepovers, where she introduced me to Saturday's Warrior, and we tried to have Star Wars marathons (and always fell asleep during The Empire Strikes Back) at her house. I'm pretty sure she introduced me to Gone with the Wind, too. During our sleepovers at my house, we'd stay up all night playing computer games like "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?" We even won the game a few times, which was quite a feat. That's when we started calling each other "Holmes" and "Watson."We auditioned at City Rep together when we were fifteen. Megan and I were both cast in a musical version of The Wind in the Willows, and we were immediately sucked into the community theater world -- a world we occupied with enthusiasm for the rest of our junior high and high school years. We may have been friends closer with other individuals then with each other, but we remained in the same circles.
For the most part, we lost touch after high school. I was sad to learn during one encounter with her that her dad had died. We did our last show together in 2000, and I'm ashamed to admit that we did not get along during that time. We had grown apart, and she had some chronic illnesses that were making her life difficult. After the play ended, we parted ways. We had mutual friends, so I still heard about her once in awhile.
Then, out of the blue last year, she messaged me on Facebook. It was the first time she had reached out to me in eleven years. I messaged back... and then didn't hear from her again until a little over a month ago. We messaged back and forth several times, catching up on our lives and our families. It was nice to be reminded of our history and to discover that neither of us held any ill-will after all this time. We became friends on Facebook and started to make plans to see each other.
On Wednesday, a mutual friend called to tell me that Megan had passed away during the night. Megan's illnesses had overwhelmed her, and she died quietly of natural causes. I've had a couple of days for it all to sink it, but it just won't. It's still too unreal.
I have very little experience with people dying that I had known well, and this one seems more personal than most because there are so many unanswered questions. I will never know what prompted Megan to get in contact with me again, but I am grateful that she did. I have talked with several of our mutual friends over the last couple of days, and many of them said that Megan also sought them out recently. I am so sad I didn't get to see her one last time, but glad that she had been talking with people she held such fond memories of. Our teenage years were awesome. I don't know if I would have had the courage to audition for that first community show without her. My life would have been so different without her.
I'll always think of Megan as a ten year-old with long, brown hair and tiny ears, dancing in her nightgown to "Sailing On" (from Saturday's Warrior). That was the Megan I knew and loved, the happy Megan who had not yet experienced all the pain of adolescence and illness and the difficulties of adulthood. I hope that she and her dad are happy together and doing good things in the spirit world. I know they are thrilled to be together again.
Good-bye, my Watson. I'll miss you.
