Not All Good Things Have To Come To An End

What once started at Berkeley......

Has continued 2500 miles away in Vermont......

Next stop.....South America.....I promise to do stupid things and get in trouble over there too.

-Han

Congruent Angles

Never thought congruency would have more meaning to me than it's definition.

Yesterday, as I was about to put my bindings on your board, I noticed something that made stop. I noticed that you had your bindings set such that each leg was at the same angle, at 9 degrees. I thought this was weird, I thought I was the only one to do something odd like that. Then I remembered how I mentioned to you that I was practicing to learn how to board switch and that I had both my bindings at the same angles (9 degrees) even though it made it harder to curve. I guess you might have followed suit and done the exact same thing. Why'd you follow my move? You know that I am not the best person to follow and that my actions only lead to trouble.

After seeing the angles, I just put my screwdriver down and went to work. When I also realized that the screws had been put in by your own hands, I couldn't get myself to undo them, especially knowing how you liked doing handy work.

I'll make your board proud man. But why'd you have to get such ugly colored bindings.

Snowboard for Han

We're so happy that Han is going to take Sky's snowboard. How perfect is that? Sky would have loved it.

~~~

I wish he was here for the new political climate in our country. There WAS hope, after all.

Godspeed

A Farewell

Here is no part

Of that we loved--

The tender heart

So quickly moved,

The wit, the laughter and the grace

Of gesture, the beloved face.

Here is a vesture doffed:

White ashes, dim and soft.

In memory of him

Who could not be confined

Save in the loving mind

We scatter to the air

This precious residue.

O memory, be true.

Now blow, fair breezes, blow,

And go, dear ashes, go.

by Janet Lewis

SKY makes the world a better place

To laugh often and much
To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children
To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends
To appreciate beauty
To find the best in others
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived; This is to have succeeded.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Hey SKY, I sit here drinking some wine and was reading through some emails, and a recent email from Wendy had her mention the trip we all took to Reno and Tahoe, you know the one where I got the $29 deal on the hotel suite at the Atlantis in Reno and we crammed in 7 people into that room because we were all poor students. The one where we all hit the buffet last minute and got way more food than we could eat such that in any other country we would have gotten arrested for wasting so much food. As I was reading Wendy's email, I looked at the pictures on my wall and sure enough, there was the picture of all of us from the trip.

You might be wondering about the quote I wrote above and thinking why the heck is Han doing writing down such a pansy quote. Well SKY, I am actually a deeper person than you might suspect. This is my favorite quote of all time and one that I try to live my life by. I have only told one other person in my life how important this quote was to me and I always promised myself I would use it for a special occasion.

Now you might be wondering what the heck does this quote and snowboarding have in common. Well, just bare with me. You see SKY, I used to be the biggest snowboarding snob in the world and still am to a lesser degree now. I used to only want to go boarding with really good boarders that were better than me and I used to not want to waste my time teaching others because I cherished my time on the slopes so much.

I believe I might have been one of the first, if not the first person to take you boarding. I definitely was the one that advocated it to you because I would talk about it all day in lab. I remember when I planned the trip the picture is from, I kind of dreaded it at the beginning because I thought I would spend most of my time watching you all fall on your butt instead of hitting the slopes. I remember how excited you were, with your new snowboarding pants and gear.

When we got to the slopes and everyone was learning, I was already dreading just sitting there telling everyone to get off their butts on the bunny slopes. Finally at one point I just told you all that I was leaving to go to a different lift. I remember you saying you will come along. I was like what the heck are you doing. But you played it off as if you could handle the runs I could go on. So you came along with me and we hit some runs that I knew were probably way too hard for you.

Well, you struggled of course but watching you persevere and get up no matter how many times you ate it was inspirational to me in a sense. No matter how hard the run was, you were still trying to keep up which I thought was amazing. Over time and many other trips to various ski resorts, you would improve vastly, even getting your own board at one point and asking me for help on what to buy. When we got to Whistler, you were able to hang with me through all the runs and I always cherished that because I loved boarding with people that loved boarding as much as I did.

Furthermore, I cherished boarding with you SKY because I watched you grow as a boarder and you made me realize how great it is to have a friend that you can teach and board with eventually. You taught me patience and that in the end, the rewards can be great. You have no idea how much I love friends that I can board with. Because of you, now I always try to get more friends into boarding and teach them in hopes of finding people that I can board with in the future just like I did with you.

In the end SKY, as convoluted as it may seem, through boarding, you made me a better person. Even though you may not be around, to me you have succeeded as a friend and as a person and I thank you for that.

- Han

Dianne Newman, who was one of Sky's advisors at CalTech (and a very, very dear friend) sent this cartoon which Sky did. Here's her explanation of it, and of his research (in layperson's terms that even I could understand!)

"As the project he started in my lab grows, I keep thinking how pleased he would have been. In fact, I'm traveling to Berlin this weekend to give a talk on his work, and I'm starting my talk with a picture that he drew for a gift my lab gave me a few years ago. I've decided I'm going to always start my talks on this project with this picture, as a tribute to him. I'm attaching it to this email. It's a picture of 2 cells talking to each other: the green one is a cyanobacterium, asking the purple one if it's making 2-MeBHPs (the molecule in the conversation bubble). Sky discovered that the purple guys could make this molecule too, which overturned the conventional wisdom that these molecules were biomarkers for cyanobacteria. Now, my lab's gone a lot further, and we're starting to get an idea of their biological function. But he started it all!"

There Was a Flower

in a bed
of stone, blooming
like a river
flowing, never
still & always

home. There was
a whippoorwill
calling 'cross the night 'neath
a starless sky--a lonesome
sound like a broken
swing, repeating its mystical

sigh. I place you
now in the hands of
love where
g-d's bright beauty lies;
the whippoorwill drops from its tree,
lifts its wings

& flies.
____________________________

Also see: What Doesn't Kill Us

From Han

Looking at my snowboard right now. Now it reminds me of you. I am in my room looking at some framed pictures that some of the people from the Leighton lab once got me and every one of them has you, KJ, Wendy, Amir, Sasha, Bill, Esperanza and Jonathan in them. My favorite is the one we all took at the Reno buffet after boarding in Tahoe.

I remember the last time we were in the same vincinity. I was in Tahoe and we were supposed to meet me up there. But alas, some idiot in a Suburu came and caused an accident with your car such that we were unable to meet up. That would have been the last official time we would have boarded together and I regret it infinitely.

You called me occasional to see if I was in Tahoe despite the fact that I am in school on the East Coast. I always wondered why so and it made me laugh. Now that I think about it, I wish I would have stayed on the phone longer just to talk and catch up rather than just brushing you aside

Today, I drink Gin and Tonics in your honor (one too many as I write this). I wish we could hit the powder one last time. I miss you and I promise I will do everything in my power to make you proud of me.

- Han

Rummaging for some phosphate buffer a couple of months back, I rotated my rack of tubes. I must not have done that in a long time, because I wasn't expecting it when your name came into view.

I used to love encountering all the laboratory ephemera that reminded me this used to be your bench -- the apparently bottomless bottle of gel-loading buffer with your initials scrawled across it; your color-coded labels (red tape for use with gloves, blue for bare fingers) that still, four years after your departure, cling to many of my pens and pencils; the sombrero-clad, trial-sized Bacardi bottle a labmate brought you as a souvenir from Puerto Rico, which I've miraculously neither consumed nor evicted from my overcrowded top shelf... It was all a comfortable legacy of your presence.

Now (still, a year later) my gut lurches every time I accidentally stumble across evidence of you.

I've learned to navigate around some of it. The few things you passed on to me when you decamped for LA, I shuffled away into a little-used drawer at home -- nearby if I need to look at them, but otherwise unable to crop up and upset me at inopportune moments. Old e-mails we exchanged, and subsequent messages about your death: all printed out, backed up, and purged from my hard drive, mercifully out of sight. I'm in a different apartment nowadays, across town, where the absence of memories makes life more manageable.

Of course all sorts of random shit still calls you to mind, but at least the more agonizing relics no longer ambush me on a day-to-day basis.

The lab can be hard, though. For all that I’ve invented little strategies -- habitually detouring around the alumni wall where your photo is pinned, orienting that rack of tubes so your name safely faces the wall again -- it's impossible to stage-manage absolutely where and when you'll manifest. It happens less often now, but I never know when I'll unwittingly come across an old vector diagram in your handwriting, or flip over an index namecard to find "Sky" scribbled on the back next to a stupid frog sticker. I'll have a sick shock of recognition that I'm holding something you made, something you touched, and that flash of connection makes your fundamental absence seem all the more profound. At which point there's nothing left to do but slip out for a little while, cry as inaudibly and briefly as possible in the corner bathroom stall, march back, and grimly reinitiate whatever task I just fucked up by leaving. (It's a stupid game, and I can't quite fathom why I play it, but bonus points are awarded for smiling like nothing's wrong.)

Some days I just want to divest completely, throw it all out and be grateful there was never more of your now-emotionally-laden material crap strewn across my daily landscape. Other days, I still struggle against the urge to hoard every last stupid scrap, anxious over how little tangible evidence of your presence is left to me. There's still something about all those physical vestiges of your life that ties me in knots... maybe because, for all that it's convenient to address this in the second person, I've never been able to convince myself of an afterlife, and have little faith there's anything left of you but memories and these cheap, unbearable, irreplaceable souvenirs.

There are moments when the absurdity of it amuses me: in your absence, I am conducting intensely fraught emotional relationships with a green plastic rack and 50 jauntily straw-hatted milliliters of bad rum.

The rest of the time, encountering these flotsam traces of your life just sucks. To a surreal extent. It seems amazing that it's been sucking for a full year already... less overwhelmingly now than at first, at least. I guess that's something.

I miss you.

one year tonight (at some time in the wee hours)

Bro, little bro, here we are at the turn of a year. I can't believe it. Can't believe so many things. Still - still/forever - can't believe you're gone. I've given up on even hoping to believe that, ever. But along with that acceptance also comes the realization that I don't ever have to let you go. Screw that. You're in my heart, my head, my life, forever.

I was in a yoga class the other night and during one of the poses, the teacher said "Turn your gaze skyward" which is not only a lovely way to say "look up", but it made me really smile and be comforted (in this difficult week, this lead-up to this "anniversary") to think that every time I look up, I'm looking "Sky-ward." Cuz I feel you up there, baby bro.

I've learned so much from you. This has been the worst, unimaginably horrific year ever. But it's also been the year of greatest learning. From you, from your pain and anguish, I've learned to find joy. From your worry and terror, I've learned some measure of acceptance. From your leaving - your unthinkable, devastating, soul-shredding leaving - I've learned, sweet boy, to live. To live, live, live, goddamnit. To love this precious life we have. Is that the gift you left behind? I'd give it all up to have you back, but I'm nonetheless deeply grateful for it.

Oh, baby, what you lost when you left this world. So much love. You were loved. You are loved. And, my god, are you ever missed.

God, do I miss you being in the world. A prayer to wherever you are:  lokah samastah, sukhino bhavantu. I pray that you have found peace, at last.

Loving you forever,

still grieving but keepin' on,

Your Big Sister who is gonna WHUP your ass when I see you. Count on it.

hugs to wherever,

Eve

Like grabbing at air

Bro,

I've been organizing all of your tools in my garage. The endless count of screwdrivers and hammers...what the hell did you do with all of those anyways?

As I clean, and put away each thing from the myriad buckets and bins, I'm trying hard to feel you, to be with you, to sense you. Each bucket of dirty and rusty shit might hold a key or map to get back to you. So far, just more tools and bolts and junk.

But, the gloves, those soft black ones, the ones you wore when we wired the house. I wear those all the time. I thank you each time I slip them on. I really like them. I think of you, of us while I work. I ask you for your advice on if I'm doing the task in the right way. I'll stop for a sec, and rub my gloved hands together slowly, as if summoning some part of you...as if I can call upon some small glimpse of you, made tangible by the soft material and my active thoughts.

So, almost through all the buckets and the bins. Looking good and organized. Plenty of shit to fix around the house. Maybe you'll be at the hot water heater, or the low branches, or the flaky lightswitch.

Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened.
--Dr. Seuss