Authentic. Selfless. Uplifting. Joyful.
These were just a few of the many descriptions of Kaylee Diodene by those who knew her during her life, one cut tragically short last week.
The St. Charles Parish community has rallied around its own following the tragic death of the 20-year-old Destrehan High School alum. Diodene, the daughter of Norco Elementary School principal Shannon Diodene and longtime Destrehan teacher and assistant baseball coach Donnie Diodene, passed away on Aug. 8 due to a very aggressive form of acute myeloid leukemia.
“My daughter wanted to save the planet,” Donnie said. “That was her goal.”
Kaylee loved animals and had a passion for protecting the environment, an interest that flourished during her time as a student of longtime Harry Hurst Middle School teacher Barry Guillot and with the Wetlands Watchers. Her desire to make the world a better place led her to study environmental conservation biology at the University of Southern Mississippi, where she was a junior in the honors program.
And making the world a better place for others seemed to come natural for Kaylee, each and every day.
“She was always that child who was authentic,” said Shannon. “Take me or leave me, but this is who I am. She always went out of her way to make everyone feel included, even when she was very young.”
Donnie echoed those thoughts.
“One thing she did a really good job of is she made everyone feel special,” Donnie said. “And she made you believe that you could be better. Because that’s how she was – she always thought she could be better. And for her, being unselfish was just being herself.
“I can’t tell you how many times I ever saw my daughter where she wasn’t smiling. And she would always be silly to make other people laugh, to make them happy. She would be the clown to make you feel better.”
Kaylee spent the bulk of her final month living what her family called her dream, studying abroad in England and Scotland.
A GoFundMe page (titled Support the Diodene Family in Memory of Kaylee) has been established by Norco Elementary teacher Madeline Evers with the aim of easing funeral expenses and other financial burdens during this time. Many have rallied to help – more than $20,000 in donations were made in the page’s first eight hours online.
“We obviously know that we can’t take away the pain and hurt that comes with this, but we do know the family is going to have a lot of financial barriers to cross over the next few weeks … we were just blown away (by the support),” Evers said. “It’s a testament to Shannon and Donnie as parents and who Kaylee was as a person, and the impact she had on everyone she came in contact with.”
Evers said Kaylee had a way of brightening the day when she would visit NES.
“I have a 2-year-old daughter and every time I would talk with Kaylee, she would ask me, ‘How’s Harper? How’s she doing?’ And what 19-to-20-year-old is that thoughtful? All the stories I’ve heard about
Kaylee – her heart, how giving she was, bringing smiles to everyone’s faces,” Evers said.
Kaylee returned home late last month after her time overseas. She passed away just days later. Blood work revealed she had cancer – nobody knew she was sick, not even Kaylee herself.
“This all happened in a week,” Shannon said.
Both parents said dealing with the pain of her loss has been day by day – or even moment by moment.
“My heart is absolutely shattered,” Shannon said. “Each morning, I wake up and I just speak to Kaylee, and I ask her to give me the strength to get up and take it one step at a time. I never thought I could do it, but somehow, I’m doing it. And it’s all the support around us and it’s our daughter giving us that strength. I know she’s with us.”
They called the community support overwhelming.
“You can’t even put it into words … you can say, ‘thank you,’ but that’s not close to enough,” Donnie said.
In addition to the GoFundMe, gift card donations can be made to the family on mealtrain.com (titled Meal Train for The Diodene Family). A raffle by Linen Rose Photography and Dawn Roe Photography raised funding for the family as well. The Destrehan baseball team arrived at the Diodenes’ home to cut their grass.
“I think we’re both speechless,” Shannon said. “There are no words to express how grateful we are for all of the love, the support, everything they’re doing.”
Another thing they’ve both found solace in is the many stories they’ve heard over the past several days about Kaylee’s very big heart.
“Through this devastation, people are just sending us messages, telling us she was the glue to the class, the person who pulled a bunch of people together that wouldn’t normally be together,” Shannon said.
One example of her desire to help others came when she joined the student government at Southern Mississippi – the first thing she did was advocate for a railing around the school’s parking garage. Students had committed suicide at the location, and she sought to prevent that from happening.
She also did volunteer work regularly. Along with her dance school team members, they would go to visit nursing homes and made it a point to stay and talk with the residents – “people there didn’t always get visitors, and she wanted to make them feel special,” Shannon said.
When she went away to college, Kaylee was worried about her parents given she was leaving – and so she made them emotional support bears.
“Now they mean so much more,” Shannon said.
Many of her good deeds are only now being discovered by her parents.
“The thing for my wife and I, we always knew she was unselfish, but we didn’t know how unselfish she was,” said Donnie. “She never told us about the things she was doing. She never wanted anything in return – she just did it.”
