Donna Payne

 I've known Donna Payne for 50 years from our shared love of art and painting. But her sudden, unexpected passing has been quite surreal every time I try to realize it. Words have been hard to come.

But Donna's cousin Linda found all the right words to say in her letter that she entered here in Donna's Memorial Page at Wood River Chapel and it has inspired me.

Truly, Donna cheered us all with her amazing ability to LAUGH!

 In the last decade of spending much more time with Donna, it seems that nearly every moment was filled with laughing!

 Why, we even found so many things to laugh about when I escorted her to buy her cremation contract at the Wood River Chapel (mortuary) few years ago. Then we sheepishly apologized for having so much fun while she signed papers for it, since it's usually such a solemn place.

 Yes, I can't think of a time we didn't laugh, even when discussing events in our lives. We found ways to see life thru a filter of humor, all the while at the same time respecting the seriousness of the times we live in.

 The pictures we have uploaded in her Memorial Page show some of the recent, as well as some older adventures that my husband Ken and I have had with Donna.

 When her last Cat, Amber and dog, Bogie passed I got her a silly yellow stuffed animal Kitty to have something to cuddle with. A few months later she was moved to go to our animal shelter, and there was a fuzzy little yellow kitty that looked 'kinda' like her stuffed animal friend that I had given her.

 So that is how she found her final kitty, "May", a yellow long hair who, by the way, took the stuffed version of herself for her own play pal, as you can see in the photos of them together.

 Our birthdays were exactly one month apart, so we managed to celebrate them on one or the other's day, or a day in between, of course with a large helping of Laughter!

 One year I took Donna up the gondola on Baldy Mt. Ski slopes to the historic Round House for our birthday lunch.

Another year we went out to Sun Valley's Trail Creek cabin for lunch and watched cross county skiers out the window with Baldy Ski Mt in the background.

And another time we visited the 'Willow House' that the Sun Valley Center for the Arts had commissioned.

Sometimes we celebrated at our house with Ken too, who also had fun with Donna.

 Donna and Ken were quite a pair, especially when some adventure came up at her house in the years after her dear friends, her travelin' buddies, first Janet, then Steve left this earth.

One big snow year, Ken barely escaped being buried in a true avalanche of snow as he was pulling it off the roof over her front doorway. It was so close!! It even poured into the porch thru the door as you can see Donna looking down at it piled at her feet! Wow...

Then there was the hole in the back yard very near the house in a path where we all had walked over since Donna moved into that house in 1972. It was just last year, in 2023, when her leg just went down in thru the earth up to her hip! Huh? We came to explore it and when the two of them opened the hole up larger they found quite a cavern below. So Ken hooked up our little trailer and hauled several loads of pea gravel to fill it up. You can see Donna's instincts jumped right in to help unload the gravel, with quite a bit of Gusto!

 I had a bad arm so I was free to document the moments in photographs, and I'm so glad I did, so you can see Donna fully into the adventure! It's still a mystery as to the nature of the event and the cavern, but as the photos show, Donna was amazingly unhurt and had a wonderful spirit too! Yes, quite a lot of laughing was involved to top off the 'hole' affair! (I'm sure Donna's laughing at that!!)

 One more thought about the photos of Della Mt. that we added. This is where Donna asked to have her ashes taken so they could flow down into the Wood River from the park below the great mountain. That is the view that Donna could see directly across the valley from her house. It's Perfect!

 So Laughing... that's the way I want to remember, and indeed to honor Donna. We must keep laughing. Any other way just won't do! So here's to you, Donna. We will try to keep your spirit of Laughter alive!

 Your friends, Ginna Lagergren and Ken Lagergren