adam.oliner.net

May Zhou, a good friend and amazing woman, was found dead in the trunk of her car; she apparently committed suicide. These are the moments of her that I remember. Some words I saved. This is a eulogy, and an apology.

May:

I met you my freshman year at MIT. You were one of my first friends there. We tooled furiously on multivariable calculus problem sets in the study lounge of MacGregor House. We were a team; me, you, Hung, Goggin, Daniel. We were in that together. I made jokes about your name, jokes that you had heard a thousand times before and probably a hundred more times after, many of those from me, again. We took many of the same classes. I remember eating Thai Cafe in an upstairs lounge of my dorm while we struggled through some horrible mathematics. You told us about the Second Cultural Revolution in China, and how it influenced your parents, and how it influenced you. You survived MIT; we all did.

We both got into Stanford’s graduate schools. You were the best of the best. We went to IKEA when you arrived in Palo Alto so that you could buy some furniture. You invited me to the tours of the Stanford Libraries, and I nearly died from boredom. I haven’t been there, since.

11:17:40 AM adam: hey may, just making sure you’re still alive

It was funny, at the time. Now I wish I had made that joke again, too.

I dragged you from your studying for quals to get Japanese food. One time we went to Homma and you had brown rice sushi for the first time. I tried to get you to come out for drinks, but you refused. “i’m not smart enough/therefore i need to study/more than you”. That is what you said. You raped your quals. You were always smarter than me, and you still worked harder than me. I always admired you for that.

We were both honored with Stanford Graduate Fellowships and we attended the award dinner. You sat next to Prof. Boyd, whom you admired. In the light of dawn, one morning last quarter, we crossed paths in the Quad. Beneath the palm trees, we exchanged greetings and promises of another meeting. Soon. That never happened.

9:49:12 PM may: ok, thanks for keeping me sane

9:49:29 PM adam: that’s my job

I’m sorry, May. I’m so, so sorry.

Farewell.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 25th, 2007 at 10:01 pm and is filed under Friends/Family. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.