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| Shuang (1963-2012) |
While I was pregnant with Norah, I was called into my bosses
office to take a call with his boss, on an unknown, but important topic. The three of us had worked together for many
years, at several companies, so I had some idea that something was up. What I wasn’t prepared for then, and still am
not today, was the seriousness of it all.
I first met Shuang in in the winter of 1998. I had just moved to the Boston area to take a
job with a company that was recently acquired by the Nortel Networks, then a
large company I worked for at the time
My direct boss would be located in Toronto, and he was her boss at the
time. I’ll be honest, I was more than a
little intimidated at the time – who were these guys who just
sold their company
for 290 million dollars? I had not
yet begun to understand the culture of a start up and the entrepreneurial
spirit that drives the founders. Adding
to Shuang’s mystique was the fact that he spoke with a strong Chinese accent and was difficult to
understand, at least at first.
Looking back, I’m not sure exactly when I realized how
important he would come to be to me, but it was long before that fateful
meeting when he told us he had Liver cancer, and things didn’t look good. A week or so later, we had what we came to
call a “Noodle conference”. We met at a
Chinese joint near where we first worked together. Shuang always ordered something in Chinese
for all of us that I was never entirely sure was actually on the menu – it was
good, so what did it matter? He didn’t
look well, and he was quite serious – he wanted to talk through his treatment
options – whether to try to remove the tumor and treat with chemo, or head
straight for transplant. At the time, I
felt humbled that he would even want to include me in this life and death
discussion. In hindsight, I know he
probably had this discussion with many others as well, and in a way, I think he
did it as much for us, Rob and I, as he did for himself – not out of character
for him.
Shuang had a way of expressing things that cut to the
essence, without coming off as abrupt or short.
A couple of my favorite examples was in 2004. I was doing a lot of hiking and backpacking,
and some friends were planning a trip to Kilimanjaro – which had been a dream
of mine since seeing the movie “
To
the Roof of Africa” several years
earlier. I was struggling whether or not
to go – it was a lot of money and a good portion of my annual vacation
allotment. Over lunch, Shuang said,
quite poignantly, “If not you, who? If not now, when?” – a phrase I’ve quoted
often in the years since. He was absolutely
right, of course, within 18 months of my return, I met Matt, my husband. Not long after came the mortgage and the kids
and the house renovations – had I not gone then, it’s unlikely I would have
ever gone, and missed one of the most memorable and mentally and physically
hardest things I’ve ever done! Another
time, I was worried about a scheduled vacation conflicting with a somewhat
fluid deadline at work, and he said to me “Don’t worry, go on vacation, the work
will be here when you get back” Wouldn’t
you know it, he was right again!
Professionally, I we’ve been through some interesting times
– mergers and acquisitions, a start-up that failed, and a lot of international
politic-ing. Through all of that I never
saw him lose his cool or let his emotions get the better of him. In fact, the only time I can think of seeing
him emotionally distraught was at the failure of a start up – and mainly
because he had let us, the employees, down.
I have learned so much from him – about how to be a Product Manager, how
to dig for information and what to make of it, and most of all how to keep your
integrity when things get “interesting”.
After a long battle, Shuang finally succumbed to the cancer
on January 8, 2012. To say the news
shocked me is an understatement. Even
though losing the battle was obviously a possibility for some time, it still
didn’t seem possible. A world without
Shuang doesn’t seem possible. I still
expect to get an email or an IM from him about some random thing… they have the
internet in heaven right? Cause that’s
surely where he is.
Rest in Peace Shaung.
