And yet, even now, you got a sense of her flair. Lying in the middle of her blanket was a large heart made of brilliant green, aqua, pink, orange and lemon-yellow yarn by a cousin who knew her penchant for bright colors.
Rick, her dad, was stretched out on a small couch nearby wearing an orange ball cap and t-shirt.
Her brother Josh was in a reclining chair on one side of the bed. His wife Teresa, another regular here, had just slipped home to take care of their 3 ½-month-old son, Garrett.
On the other side of the bed sat Jayne, holding her daughter’s swollen left hand.
This was the scene Friday afternoon in a small, fifth-floor room at St. Rita’s Medical Center in Lima.
Krystal’s eyes were closed. Her breathing was intermittent and heavy, as though she were in a deep sleep. Besieged by pneumonia, her one good kidney failing, her body finally overcome, she had been in hospice care for nearly a week and had not responded since Sunday afternoon.
Nearly 11 years ago — during spring break of her freshman year at the University of Dayton — she had been diagnosed with biphenotypic acute leukemia (BAL). The ordeal that followed had often been staggering.
Over the years there had been numerous rounds of chemotherapy and full-body radiation, heart failure, kidney failure, a year of dialysis, a kidney transplanted from her mom, a stem cell transplant from a New York baby’s umbilical cord, medical relapses, care flights and last rites, not to mention surgeries to repair an elbow, replace a hip, replace a shoulder and scores of other hospital stays.
Along the way she had seen many of the friends she’d made in the cancer wards end up dying.
Now her own battle was coming to an end, though, as always, on her terms.
Last Sunday doctors had told her parents she’d likely live one to three days. Now it was five.
“They came in and said she just has a very, very strong heart,” Jayne said quietly. “They’re talking about the organ, but I also think of it as our Krystal having a good heart, a loving heart, just an amazing heart. You can see it in the way she loved life, the way she loved people.”
The return on that showed in the outpouring she's gotten on her Facebook page, as well as another page, Jayne said, that had been put together by people trying to get her story on the Ellen DeGeneres Show.
“Krystal has 2,100 followers on that page,” Jayne said. “Many of those people had never met her, but they said they were inspired by her and loved her.”
Facebook became “her window to the world,” Rick said. And when people looked back through it, they not only saw her loving nature, but her unwavering will to live.
“That’s what’s happening now,” Jayne said. “Her body is programmed to fight.”
That had made it a tough week for everybody, she admitted: “This week reminds me of when we were back in Cleveland, getting her stem cell transplant. Like then, we’re exhausted.
“Back then it was because we were doing everything we could to keep her alive and now we’re doing what we need to do to get her to heaven.”
And just a few hours later — at around 7:45 p.m. Friday — Krystal passed away while holding the hand of her brother.
Krystal’s funeral service was Monday morning.
In the final days, Josh struggled mightily with the prospect of losing his 30-year-old sister. She was his only sibling and he loved her. When she initially got sick in 2005, he spent many nights sleeping in her hospital room, all while working full-time at a local factory and going to college at the Ohio State branch in Lima.
Later, she was the maid of honor in his wedding and now she was the one person who could cradle his young son and make him laugh. Many other folks could not.
The baby knew he was in the presence of a special person and so did the hospital chaplain who told Rick and Jayne Krystal certainly had to be heaven-bound.
As for what heaven might actually be like, Rick asked Krystal about it during one of her last lucid moments:
“I’d always said if there was a fire at our house we had to have a place we’d all meet. So I asked Krystal, ‘Where you want us all to meet in heaven? What do you think it’s gonna be like up there?’
“And she said, ‘The middle of the court … at a big game … at UD Arena.’ ”
And the University of Dayton was heaven to her.
I’ve been around UD for over 60 years — through my family as a kid, as a student myself and for the past three decades covering athletes and games there as a sportswriter — and I can say this without hesitation:
“No one has ever wanted to be a Dayton Flyer more than Krystal Byrne.”
A fondness for UD
When she came to UD from Ottoville, population 975, she was a small-town girl with a big presence.
She was 6-feet tall, muscular and had that long blonde hair — except when she dyed it pink — exploding off her head.
She was a National Honor Society student with a 3.8 grade-point average, an All-Putnam County band selection on saxophone and an athletic pioneer.
Although Ottoville High School had no girls soccer team until she was a senior, she would not be denied. She became the first girl to play on the boys varsity at her northwest Ohio school, lettering three straight years before captaining the girls team her final season.
When it came time for college, she stepped on the UD campus and, in Jayne’s words “fell in love with the place. And it turned out to be a great fit for her freshman year.”
She made the Dean’s List, joined the dance team and talked to women’s soccer coach Mike Tucker — who would later become her friend — about trying to walk onto his team the following year.
Then came the spring-break diagnosis and a medical nightmare that waylaid her until 2006 when she was healthy enough to return to UD.
But two weeks later her kidneys failed and she was taken by life flight back to Cleveland. A year of dialysis followed and finally came the kidney transplant from Jayne.
Over the years she said she “officially” dropped out of UD five times and took leaves another 15 times when she became too sick or was confined to the hospital.
That’s when Jayne said they realized UD was a good school for their daughter: “It was the perfect place. Her professors, her friends there, people in financial aid, everybody helped her to keep her dream going. She wanted to graduate from UD.”
I remember sitting with her on a bench between Kennedy Union and Sherman Hall one day in the fall of 2008. She had finally returned to campus full-time and she explained why she didn’t give up:
“All I ever wanted to do was get back to school here. That was my dream. When I was a freshman, people here had made me feel I could accomplish anything and when all else failed that was what I hung on to. Dayton was the only thing I wanted.”
And she embraced it full bore.
She took part in Christmas on Campus and represented the school at Children’s Hospital, where she dressed as an elf to give out stuffed animals she had collected. She and a friend won a pumpkin-carving contest on campus with an angry-faced gourd that spit out the word “XAVIER.”
While also an Ohio State football fan, she was especially committed to UD sports and joined the Red Scare, sometimes painting her face red and blue to enhance her vocal support of the Flyers’ teams.
When then-basketball coach Brian Gregory learned of her, he had his NCAA Tournament-bound players first autograph a basketball and then found someone to deliver it to her back in Ottoville, where she was recovering from another relapse.
“My players and I are moved by Krystal’s courage and her love for the university,” Gregory said,
Tucker so bonded with her that he had her speak to his soccer team before a game and offered her a spot on his bench anytime she wanted to take in a game.
“Krystal was one of the toughest, bravest people I ever met and she did it all with a smile,” Tucker said Friday. “She was a tremendous role model for our girls on how to approach life. I’m grateful for every minute I got to spend with her.”
When he once found out she was ill back home, he and his team put together a DVD wishing her well and got everybody from men’s players Devin Oliver and Josh Benson to women’s hoops coach Jim Jabir to join in.
“UD was the best medicine Krystal ever had,” Jayne said. “It kept her alive.”
And in 2012, a couple of months shy of 27, she did graduate, cum laude with a degree in visual communication.
Danced every dance
Not long after Krystal was diagnosed, Ottoville held a bone marrow donor drive and the unfathomable happened. The whole town and more — 978 people — showed up, paid the $25 testing cost and had a vial of blood drawn in hopes they would be a match for Krystal.
Nobody was, but three people did end up matches for other people around the nation.
Recently, the Mothers Club of Ottoville had scheduled a Krystal “Byrne” Rubber 5K Run and Fun Walk for March 26. The plan was to collect funds for the medical challenges that again lay ahead for her.
She needed another kidney transplant, but just recently she got the devastating news that she had been denied because her body was too compromised.
Then came the pneumonia and her Facebook posts showed her growing concern.
“Uh oh … something is going wrong … Pray they figure out what,” she wrote Jan. 18.
On Jan. 21, she posted: “Tomorrow morning they will be moving me to ICU. They are going to put in a breathing tube and hook me up to a ventilator. I am beyond terrified.”
Last Sunday at 2:14 a.m., she wrote: “Jesus, if I’m gonna do this I could use a little help. I’m terrified. I can’t breathe. I just want to go home.”
And then came her final post last Sunday at 9:59 a.m.: “I’ll be seeing you … Heaven awaits. I love you all. Please take care of my family.”
In the end, the most poignant moments came as her immediate family surrounded her bedside.
That Josh struggled was not surprising. Seeing his sister lying there contrasted so much with the vibrant person she was. And that had been no more evident than at his 2008 wedding.
Afterward, Krystal had given me the run down: “I danced every single dance. I even danced to dinner music. I was just so excited about being there. I danced with my friends and sometimes I just danced by myself.”
Over the last few days Rick shaved off his white beard, which Krystal had taken great delight in getting him to comb upward so he looked like The Wolverine.
“I shaved it for her,” he said softly Friday afternoon. “I had to clear it with the rest, but I’m going to be a pallbearer. I know parents don’t usually do that, but I’ve been with her every step of the way and I’m going to carry her the last few, too.”
As for Jayne, she was with Krystal the most and they developed a special bond.
“Because of Krystal’s situation, she and I became best friends and enjoyed the smallest things in life. We used to love to go have coffee at The Grind in Delphos … And then there were those scary movies.”
With that, she started to laugh: “She loved them and I hate them. But for 11 years I watched them with her and now she’s made sure her friends will take her place so I’ll have someone to watch those scary movies with.
“That makes me feel good, but I’m going to miss Krystal. It won’t be the same.”
Krystal had a way of taking a scary situation, forging through it and taking you along in the process.
“I learned a lot from her,” Jayne said. “I learned to live each day to the fullest and to hold tight to your kids. To love them and treat them like gold. I realize that more than ever now.”
Even in dying, Krystal taught everyone else how to live.
About the Author