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eve11Ten years ago, I made a decision. Because so few people have the opportunity to achieve a PhD, I would make sure to do it. I didn't think it would take this much time to complete it. Time passes but always in the back of my mind, I am so, so grateful that I had the luxury of this time.
I made a decision ten years ago to finish and to make it count, and even if I was going into stats instead of pure math, and wasn't heading for academia or teaching, that I would always keep on being a math chick. And because one person would never ever get the chance to finish her dissertation, I would finish mine and I would make it be for both of us.
Memories of a person turn into a little set of discrete moments that stick in your head. Even of people you see every day, even of your closest friends; as time goes on the details are these few crisp scenes, strung together by your impressions and thoughts. It's distressing; did the friendship still "count" if the distinct memories have faded? I find this even happens with family too, and things that happened last week. But it is frustrating to think of it this way when memories are all you have. So much time has passed; ten years, and suddenly it's no time at all.
So, my memories of Colleen:
- Meeting her for the first time at the dining hall in 1995, wondering what was up with her; long straight red hair in a plain ponytail, freckles all over the place, sharp features and thick glasses, dressed in a dark green turtleneck. I was a bit confused because she seemed to be trembling all over. (I never asked her about it, though I did do a little bit of research out of curiosity and discovered that it was most likely some form of cerebral palsy, and I left it at that.) I was more confused because she was eating plain wheat toast with nothing on it, not even butter. And in the midst of about day five of a freshman year at college--where so many people waffled around on why they were there, and even the people who had a major tied down said it like they were poking swampy ground ahead with a long pointy stick--when we asked her what her major was she said "Math" and we all knew she meant it.
- Me and Colleen and Pat in Physics 2, doing the "drop the meter stick" measurement of reaction time and having to adapt it for Colleen's inevitable outlier. Even when we put the meter stick at the very bottom and dropped it all the way through its height she couldn't catch it before it slipped past. These days I would just mark her reaction time as a censored data point and use a CDF measurement there in the likelihood for her. Maybe that's what we ended up doing; just writing "1m" down for her, and moving on. Or maybe she concentrated a bit harder for one more try, and Pat held on just a fraction longer, steadying the meter stick until she grasped it.
- Dressing as the Endless for Halloween. Colleen as Delirium with her string of gummy Swedish fish behind her.
- Her quiet assurance in all things mathematical. The precision with which she took notes, wrote out homework problems, explained details. She loved math and she was not afraid to show it, not at all. But where I fell in love with big concepts, metaphors and an almost visual perception of beauty in the subject, I think she loved all of that but that she equally loved all of the minute details. The certainty of tying down a particular proof or integral in her determined and shaky handwriting. Limits, logic, repeated fractions, continuity. There was something underlying all of it for her, and I wanted to know what it was. I wanted to know how she thought.
- Walking back to our shared apartment (number 617) in the summer of 1999, trying to do the Sieve of Eratosthenes in our heads up to the square root of 617 so we could determine whether or not 617 was prime.
- Her face lighting up when Randy gave her headphones in the Atherton lobby, that were apparently playing Dar Williams ("Christians and the Pagans"). I'd never heard of Dar Williams until then. She knew exactly who it was and started singing along.
- Sitting in Number Theory class together, a tiny room in the McAllister math building; literally a closet with 12 desks and a blackboard shoved in.
- Making cookies without a mixer. Me stirring fridge-hard butter with a wooden spoon until it softened because I am very impatient. Her spooning the batter onto the sheet.
- Playing pool in the basement rec room. She was terrible at it but she played anyway.
- Her perfect pitch, how she would correct Graydon when he said he was singing in tune. Her complaining that the shower had driven her crazy that morning because it was whistling a dissonance right between two notes.
- Learning "ithiga" speech from her for the first time.
- Writing notes backward to be read in mirrors.
- Looking at a few pages of an early honors thesis draft of hers while sitting in the closet classroom. It was something to do with missile trajectories, I think; she was working with the Applied Research Lab at PSU. I was unfamiliar with TeX, so I must not yet have started writing mine. She had a compile error somewhere and was frustrated she couldn't track it down. I had no idea how someone could have a compile error while writing a document.
- Randy teasing her. "Colleen....!" for some reason I think he was threatening to say "Linoleum!" afterward? Was there possibly also something with Mr. Mistoffilees? No, it was one of the other cats. Help me college folks, which one? But anyway she would try to be angry but she couldn't stop smiling. Then she would yell at him, sometimes literal wordless yells.
[And later, friends bolstering my memory; yes, Linoleum was one of the words she couldn't stand, along with "insert", "kumquat", and making elephant noises. One year some folks gave her an actual tile of linoleum that could be worn as a placard, and an INSERT key off of a keyboard. The Cat was Rum Tum Tugger. And I think Randy (and possibly Evil Mike?) would just test random words out on her. I think I remember "Colleen!....bassoon," but I don't remember whether she shrugged it off or ran from the room.]
- Walking down the block on the street by Old Main, Colleen having to head back up to one of the administrative buildings. I asked why and she said she had to fill out some kind of form for her disability. And I had to stop and think about it before I realized that oh yeah, I suppose she did have a disability. I hardly noticed it anymore, and when I did I didn't think of it that way; it was just part of who she was.
- Talking on ICQ after she moved on to UIUC in 1999. Just silly things. What classes she was taking. She liked a boy. She graduated the year before me and moved on, but we talked a bit over that chat client when I was at PSU. Chat was still a very early technology and not so integrated with everything as it is now. No Facebook. No Gmail. No smart phones. We'd lost touch by the time I was at the CMU statistics department in 2000.
The next I heard was when Christine called me (trying to get in touch with me all day because I'd been on the computer, dial-up, likely surfing X-files stories), to tell me Colleen had been hit by a car and killed while walking along the side of the road at UIUC. She died on July 23, 2002. She was 25 years old.
I remember hanging up the phone, sitting at the top of the stairs in my apartment on 5th avenue, gathering laundry and feeling numb. I went to my old giant desktop and drew up all of the history of our few chats, the last of which must have occurred two years prior. I saved them on a 3.5 floppy disk and thought I should send them to her family, but for some reason I decided against it; thought it might be stupid or somehow self-serving. I think I might still have the disk somewhere. I don't think I have a computer left that can read it.
I met with my then-advisor that day or the next. I was wearing a long green skirt. I never wear skirts. It may have been that it was the only clean outfit I had (see above, re: laundry). I was trying to be okay with things. I just told my advisor that yes, I could work on things for X or Y but I had to go out of town that weekend. And when he asked why I just blurted out "for a funeral" and burst into tears.
Snippets of things that I synthesize into a story:
She was very studious and serious when she was in math mode. She was down to earth, a purist and extremely passionate about her subject. But she also had a fun and self-assured streak to her. She was a cool person to hang out with. She had a bit of a wicked smile and liked to relax and have fun, and she could be very silly. I almost never saw her sad or down, but maybe I mistook sad and down for thinking deep thoughts.
She was a little older than I was and in some ways more mature. I think she was more used to having to work at things. I skipped classes; she didn't. I left assignments to the last minute; she gave herself enough time to meticulously re-copy her hand-worked problems before turning them in. I took to discrete math like a fish to water but struggled with higher calc and the less "fun" stuff; she soaked up number theory and differential equations equally, and she loved all of it. I remember helping her with an English essay where she wrote about the fact that she didn't learn to walk until she was four years old. But that meant that she noticed a lot, and had time to think.
And I think I learned from her how to revel in being different, being surprising. How to be true to myself. Math and I were late-coming friends; I didn't really start liking it until 11th grade. Colleen was the first real "math chick" I ever met. By my second semester I was taking esoteric math electives; by my second year I was already an unofficial math major before I added it as a second degree. I had female calculus teachers in high school, but it's different to look up to a teacher when you are a teen-ager, as opposed to looking up to a friend. And being a math teacher is different than being a mathematician. Even at 19, Colleen was a mathematician.
She was, in all respects, an amazing person. And what I think is that the world, the whole wide world, is diminished because she left it so early.
I still have dreams sometimes where the accident was a mistake, some kind of misinterpretation of information on my part. She hadn't died; she was recovering in an old country house, surrounded by fields of corn and sunflowers, isolated in a vale where far-away cliffs rose up to touch the sky. I would visit her in these dreams and she was mercurial and distant, struggling to come back to the world. She was the dimmest thing in the room, like a ghola who had forgotten who they were truly meant to be. But even then, even despite all of these strange inconsistencies that made perfect sense in dreams, there was still that hope when I was asleep, that she was continuing somehow. That she hadn't died in such a blameless, senseless way. That even if I forgot her, she would still be out there, making her way. Experiencing the world and letting it experience her.
I'd wake up from these dreams, so far removed from the event, and I'd think how terrible it is for her family: for her beautiful younger sisters and brother, who miss her more than I, as a fading college friend, have any right to do. For her mom and dad, who nurtured her and gave her so much (everything except a middle name, her user ID was cxk because it had to be), and who I could tell immediately when I met them--her mom when we shared that summer apartment, her dad, not until her funeral--how they had helped to shape her into this utterly remarkable, unique and wonderful person. This is the worst family ever to lose someone like this, I think. This is the family that can handle it the most and that deserves it the least.
Her parents who you could tell even at Colleen's funeral were still best friends and would not let tragedy take that away. Her mom who said that she'd been sitting with Colleen's sister, just missing her, all the way in Illinois, and wanting to talk to her before the call came on the day she died. Her dad who was so composed and genuine talking at her wake, who explained that anyone who knew Colleen, the first thing they would notice was that she was "wiggly". He explained to us that the trembling was athetoid cerebral palsy, but that she had also had a cocktail of some others: ataxic that affected her balance, spastic that gave her some jerky movements and facial tics. It was the first time I heard a specific name given to her disability. Right now, it's all I remember specifically except afterward, her dad wanting to know from the group of us, reunited, sitting in the circle of chairs in the bright green grass, that his little girl was accepted and "normal" at college.
She was, of course she was. She was brilliant.
She never got to write a dissertation, to be a post-doc or a faculty member. She never got to fight for tenure or put "Doctor" in front of her name. She never got to be a PhD math chick.
So ten years ago I decided that I would be a PhD math chick for both of us. I would write a dissertation in the discipline of statistics--not her discipline, but the weird red-headed stepchild of math, that has to work a little bit harder, be a little bit different, to deal with the real world--and I would dedicate it to her. I didn't tell very many people about it because I've been so scared that I wouldn't finish. I envision the big picture and the end result, but a dissertation is all about the details, which has never been my strength. Still, I learn. I continue. And her memory is always in the back of my mind, more than an inspiration or an obligation or a lesson learned. She deserved so much more. She was my friend, and I miss her.
These are my memories. Others have other pieces of the puzzle and it's worthwhile to take them out and polish them. We lose people, and we have these discrete, pristine moments that our minds have decided for one reason or another are easy electrochemical formations to relax into; the passing years seem to solidify only these. But underlying that is this strange intangible fabric; the insight of a symmetry that completes these discrete recreations of our senses. Because underneath that is the continuity--the parts of you that those people have shaped. This fact exists orthogonal to any further passage of time: I wouldn't be where I am today without her.
I made a decision ten years ago to finish and to make it count, and even if I was going into stats instead of pure math, and wasn't heading for academia or teaching, that I would always keep on being a math chick. And because one person would never ever get the chance to finish her dissertation, I would finish mine and I would make it be for both of us.
Memories of a person turn into a little set of discrete moments that stick in your head. Even of people you see every day, even of your closest friends; as time goes on the details are these few crisp scenes, strung together by your impressions and thoughts. It's distressing; did the friendship still "count" if the distinct memories have faded? I find this even happens with family too, and things that happened last week. But it is frustrating to think of it this way when memories are all you have. So much time has passed; ten years, and suddenly it's no time at all.
So, my memories of Colleen:
- Meeting her for the first time at the dining hall in 1995, wondering what was up with her; long straight red hair in a plain ponytail, freckles all over the place, sharp features and thick glasses, dressed in a dark green turtleneck. I was a bit confused because she seemed to be trembling all over. (I never asked her about it, though I did do a little bit of research out of curiosity and discovered that it was most likely some form of cerebral palsy, and I left it at that.) I was more confused because she was eating plain wheat toast with nothing on it, not even butter. And in the midst of about day five of a freshman year at college--where so many people waffled around on why they were there, and even the people who had a major tied down said it like they were poking swampy ground ahead with a long pointy stick--when we asked her what her major was she said "Math" and we all knew she meant it.
- Me and Colleen and Pat in Physics 2, doing the "drop the meter stick" measurement of reaction time and having to adapt it for Colleen's inevitable outlier. Even when we put the meter stick at the very bottom and dropped it all the way through its height she couldn't catch it before it slipped past. These days I would just mark her reaction time as a censored data point and use a CDF measurement there in the likelihood for her. Maybe that's what we ended up doing; just writing "1m" down for her, and moving on. Or maybe she concentrated a bit harder for one more try, and Pat held on just a fraction longer, steadying the meter stick until she grasped it.
- Dressing as the Endless for Halloween. Colleen as Delirium with her string of gummy Swedish fish behind her.
- Her quiet assurance in all things mathematical. The precision with which she took notes, wrote out homework problems, explained details. She loved math and she was not afraid to show it, not at all. But where I fell in love with big concepts, metaphors and an almost visual perception of beauty in the subject, I think she loved all of that but that she equally loved all of the minute details. The certainty of tying down a particular proof or integral in her determined and shaky handwriting. Limits, logic, repeated fractions, continuity. There was something underlying all of it for her, and I wanted to know what it was. I wanted to know how she thought.
- Walking back to our shared apartment (number 617) in the summer of 1999, trying to do the Sieve of Eratosthenes in our heads up to the square root of 617 so we could determine whether or not 617 was prime.
- Her face lighting up when Randy gave her headphones in the Atherton lobby, that were apparently playing Dar Williams ("Christians and the Pagans"). I'd never heard of Dar Williams until then. She knew exactly who it was and started singing along.
- Sitting in Number Theory class together, a tiny room in the McAllister math building; literally a closet with 12 desks and a blackboard shoved in.
- Making cookies without a mixer. Me stirring fridge-hard butter with a wooden spoon until it softened because I am very impatient. Her spooning the batter onto the sheet.
- Playing pool in the basement rec room. She was terrible at it but she played anyway.
- Her perfect pitch, how she would correct Graydon when he said he was singing in tune. Her complaining that the shower had driven her crazy that morning because it was whistling a dissonance right between two notes.
- Learning "ithiga" speech from her for the first time.
- Writing notes backward to be read in mirrors.
- Looking at a few pages of an early honors thesis draft of hers while sitting in the closet classroom. It was something to do with missile trajectories, I think; she was working with the Applied Research Lab at PSU. I was unfamiliar with TeX, so I must not yet have started writing mine. She had a compile error somewhere and was frustrated she couldn't track it down. I had no idea how someone could have a compile error while writing a document.
- Randy teasing her. "Colleen....!" for some reason I think he was threatening to say "Linoleum!" afterward? Was there possibly also something with Mr. Mistoffilees? No, it was one of the other cats. Help me college folks, which one? But anyway she would try to be angry but she couldn't stop smiling. Then she would yell at him, sometimes literal wordless yells.
[And later, friends bolstering my memory; yes, Linoleum was one of the words she couldn't stand, along with "insert", "kumquat", and making elephant noises. One year some folks gave her an actual tile of linoleum that could be worn as a placard, and an INSERT key off of a keyboard. The Cat was Rum Tum Tugger. And I think Randy (and possibly Evil Mike?) would just test random words out on her. I think I remember "Colleen!....bassoon," but I don't remember whether she shrugged it off or ran from the room.]
- Walking down the block on the street by Old Main, Colleen having to head back up to one of the administrative buildings. I asked why and she said she had to fill out some kind of form for her disability. And I had to stop and think about it before I realized that oh yeah, I suppose she did have a disability. I hardly noticed it anymore, and when I did I didn't think of it that way; it was just part of who she was.
- Talking on ICQ after she moved on to UIUC in 1999. Just silly things. What classes she was taking. She liked a boy. She graduated the year before me and moved on, but we talked a bit over that chat client when I was at PSU. Chat was still a very early technology and not so integrated with everything as it is now. No Facebook. No Gmail. No smart phones. We'd lost touch by the time I was at the CMU statistics department in 2000.
The next I heard was when Christine called me (trying to get in touch with me all day because I'd been on the computer, dial-up, likely surfing X-files stories), to tell me Colleen had been hit by a car and killed while walking along the side of the road at UIUC. She died on July 23, 2002. She was 25 years old.
I remember hanging up the phone, sitting at the top of the stairs in my apartment on 5th avenue, gathering laundry and feeling numb. I went to my old giant desktop and drew up all of the history of our few chats, the last of which must have occurred two years prior. I saved them on a 3.5 floppy disk and thought I should send them to her family, but for some reason I decided against it; thought it might be stupid or somehow self-serving. I think I might still have the disk somewhere. I don't think I have a computer left that can read it.
I met with my then-advisor that day or the next. I was wearing a long green skirt. I never wear skirts. It may have been that it was the only clean outfit I had (see above, re: laundry). I was trying to be okay with things. I just told my advisor that yes, I could work on things for X or Y but I had to go out of town that weekend. And when he asked why I just blurted out "for a funeral" and burst into tears.
Snippets of things that I synthesize into a story:
She was very studious and serious when she was in math mode. She was down to earth, a purist and extremely passionate about her subject. But she also had a fun and self-assured streak to her. She was a cool person to hang out with. She had a bit of a wicked smile and liked to relax and have fun, and she could be very silly. I almost never saw her sad or down, but maybe I mistook sad and down for thinking deep thoughts.
She was a little older than I was and in some ways more mature. I think she was more used to having to work at things. I skipped classes; she didn't. I left assignments to the last minute; she gave herself enough time to meticulously re-copy her hand-worked problems before turning them in. I took to discrete math like a fish to water but struggled with higher calc and the less "fun" stuff; she soaked up number theory and differential equations equally, and she loved all of it. I remember helping her with an English essay where she wrote about the fact that she didn't learn to walk until she was four years old. But that meant that she noticed a lot, and had time to think.
And I think I learned from her how to revel in being different, being surprising. How to be true to myself. Math and I were late-coming friends; I didn't really start liking it until 11th grade. Colleen was the first real "math chick" I ever met. By my second semester I was taking esoteric math electives; by my second year I was already an unofficial math major before I added it as a second degree. I had female calculus teachers in high school, but it's different to look up to a teacher when you are a teen-ager, as opposed to looking up to a friend. And being a math teacher is different than being a mathematician. Even at 19, Colleen was a mathematician.
She was, in all respects, an amazing person. And what I think is that the world, the whole wide world, is diminished because she left it so early.
I still have dreams sometimes where the accident was a mistake, some kind of misinterpretation of information on my part. She hadn't died; she was recovering in an old country house, surrounded by fields of corn and sunflowers, isolated in a vale where far-away cliffs rose up to touch the sky. I would visit her in these dreams and she was mercurial and distant, struggling to come back to the world. She was the dimmest thing in the room, like a ghola who had forgotten who they were truly meant to be. But even then, even despite all of these strange inconsistencies that made perfect sense in dreams, there was still that hope when I was asleep, that she was continuing somehow. That she hadn't died in such a blameless, senseless way. That even if I forgot her, she would still be out there, making her way. Experiencing the world and letting it experience her.
I'd wake up from these dreams, so far removed from the event, and I'd think how terrible it is for her family: for her beautiful younger sisters and brother, who miss her more than I, as a fading college friend, have any right to do. For her mom and dad, who nurtured her and gave her so much (everything except a middle name, her user ID was cxk because it had to be), and who I could tell immediately when I met them--her mom when we shared that summer apartment, her dad, not until her funeral--how they had helped to shape her into this utterly remarkable, unique and wonderful person. This is the worst family ever to lose someone like this, I think. This is the family that can handle it the most and that deserves it the least.
Her parents who you could tell even at Colleen's funeral were still best friends and would not let tragedy take that away. Her mom who said that she'd been sitting with Colleen's sister, just missing her, all the way in Illinois, and wanting to talk to her before the call came on the day she died. Her dad who was so composed and genuine talking at her wake, who explained that anyone who knew Colleen, the first thing they would notice was that she was "wiggly". He explained to us that the trembling was athetoid cerebral palsy, but that she had also had a cocktail of some others: ataxic that affected her balance, spastic that gave her some jerky movements and facial tics. It was the first time I heard a specific name given to her disability. Right now, it's all I remember specifically except afterward, her dad wanting to know from the group of us, reunited, sitting in the circle of chairs in the bright green grass, that his little girl was accepted and "normal" at college.
She was, of course she was. She was brilliant.
She never got to write a dissertation, to be a post-doc or a faculty member. She never got to fight for tenure or put "Doctor" in front of her name. She never got to be a PhD math chick.
So ten years ago I decided that I would be a PhD math chick for both of us. I would write a dissertation in the discipline of statistics--not her discipline, but the weird red-headed stepchild of math, that has to work a little bit harder, be a little bit different, to deal with the real world--and I would dedicate it to her. I didn't tell very many people about it because I've been so scared that I wouldn't finish. I envision the big picture and the end result, but a dissertation is all about the details, which has never been my strength. Still, I learn. I continue. And her memory is always in the back of my mind, more than an inspiration or an obligation or a lesson learned. She deserved so much more. She was my friend, and I miss her.
These are my memories. Others have other pieces of the puzzle and it's worthwhile to take them out and polish them. We lose people, and we have these discrete, pristine moments that our minds have decided for one reason or another are easy electrochemical formations to relax into; the passing years seem to solidify only these. But underlying that is this strange intangible fabric; the insight of a symmetry that completes these discrete recreations of our senses. Because underneath that is the continuity--the parts of you that those people have shaped. This fact exists orthogonal to any further passage of time: I wouldn't be where I am today without her.
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no subject
Date: 2012-05-11 04:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-11 04:47 am (UTC)So, yes, I thank you for having shared this. And I am glad that you can share your math chick PhD with the friend who journeyed with you as you earned it.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-11 06:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-11 11:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-11 12:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-11 12:37 pm (UTC)Linoleum was definitely the word that drove her nuts. I don't remember about the cats.
She was always in our wider group of friends, but I didn't really get to know her well until our junior or senior year.
Natalie Merchant's "Life is Sweet" always reminds me of her.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-11 12:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-11 03:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-11 03:43 pm (UTC)I think the Cat I'm thinking of is Rum Tum Tugger. And there was at some point, I believe, an actual tile of linoleum, that had a loop of yarn or something on it so it could be worn as a placard. This might have been a direct result of Evil Mike.
I remember how we told her dad, Of all the Colleens at college that we knew, her shorthand nickname was really and truly "normal Colleen."
ETA: And, Natalie Merchant songs; rarely do I stop to listen to the lyrics but the song "Wonder" was on the radio when I was driving in to work earlier this week and the lyrics remind me of Colleen.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-11 04:23 pm (UTC)I remember the story her mom told at the funeral about the song "Life is Sweet" and how Colleen would put it on for her sister when she stopped by her room if she wasn't there. Her sister would come back and turn on the stereo and know that Colleen had been by because the song was playing.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-11 05:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-11 05:33 pm (UTC)One of my favorite memories not listed above was the time that we commandeered the Atlas house study lounge for something like three days straight, and in particular plodding through Wells' crazy topology final that really had nothing to do with topology. That might have been the same semester that the poor bastards in honors calc had to integrate 1/(1+x^4).
But at any rate, thanks for what you've done here. I've sometimes wondered if it was a bit selfish of me not to attend her viewing or memorial service, but I never wanted my last image of Colleen to be [insert displeasing imagery here]. She deserves to be remembered not for her tragic end, but for who she was when she was still with us. And you've done a wonderful job of reminding the world about that part of her.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-11 06:04 pm (UTC)I still tell the story of Wells' class, one of them, where he came in and announced, "I've been told I need to have a syllabus for this class. So here is the syllabus." He then wrote up on the top corner of the board: I. Whole book and that was it.
And I remember the Atlas study lounge! There were like two students in there who for some reason decided to be angry at us for being loud and un-studious, as opposed to, you know, getting up and going somewhere else.
"Insert", LOL. Now I do remember there was something about Tab A and slot B that made her cover her ears and want to run from the room.
Also: We all deal with loss the way we need to. I was angry with myself for not keeping in touch when I could have. It is the worst way to have to reconnect with someone. I was scared to go but I'm glad I did because I learned more about her.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-11 08:31 pm (UTC)from Jada
Date: 2012-05-12 02:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-12 02:15 am (UTC)That study lounge may have been loud, but we were far from unstudious. And we were giving out coffee!
no subject
Date: 2012-05-12 02:37 am (UTC)Kudos to you for persevering to reach this goal, and sharing it with her. In the times when you felt like you couldn't do it, I like to think she was the encouraging voice in your head that kept you going.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-12 03:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-12 03:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-13 06:46 pm (UTC)While I never knew Colleen, you have introduced us and she seemed like an amazing person that tragedy had no right to take away. In the process of your remembrance, I can't help but be reminded of my own friend, Erinn, who was also hit by a car while crossing the street with her best friend two years ago and has been in a coma ever since. You are absolutely right when you say that our friends shaped who we are today and there are so many snippets of memory I have with Erinn.
If you still have Colleen's parents' address, I would strongly recommend sending them a copy of this post. I sent Erinn postcards and small care packages - a tiara on her birthday, a framed picture of us for Valentine's Day - and I didn't know whether the gifts were helping her family or making them feel worse. I received a holiday card from her parents who told me that even though Erinn hasn't shown any signs of improvement, the visible love from friends such as me was so wonderful for them.
You did it - and I would bet that when you walk and get hooded, Colleen will be right next to you because that is where you want her to be.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-14 12:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-14 01:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-14 02:37 am (UTC)I've been planning to get in touch with Colleen's family; I will likely try to find them on Facebook if I can. It's just been a really long time and I've not kept in touch at all (of course; I'm terrible at keeping in touch). But I want to send them a copy of the thesis with my dedication at the beginning (just a short sentence in the document), and scan the few pictures I have of Colleen from our college days. I think the above post is too long to put into the thesis as an acknowledgement or dedication but I will send them a link as well or a letter.
I hadn't planned on writing this post but it just kinda all spilled out on Thursday night because I've been thinking about her a lot, and I'd just finished up my last bits of revisions. I just drove home and wrote this all down and was a bit of a wreck for various reasons. But it is also nice to think back on those old times too; as
no subject
Date: 2012-05-14 02:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-22 03:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-22 05:07 am (UTC)This is an amazing piece, getting such feeling to spill out, in such an elegant way. The people we lose are never really gone, if we remember... as they say.
Even in the inevitable march of time, where we meet for only moments, we can be unaware of the change that comes out of that. Only ever seeing it in the light of memory, and it is a good thing.
I'm glad you finished, congratulations. Sounds like she would be glad too.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-22 03:29 pm (UTC)I don't think anyone who knew Colleen could leave her entirely behind; I know I never have.
In these few words, you've said what took me many more to express :) Thanks again.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-22 03:37 pm (UTC)I'm glad you finished, congratulations. Sounds like she would be glad too.
Thanks again! And I like to think she'd be saying "OMG, Finally!" along with the rest of my family and old college friends. But she probably wouldn't be able to get past the fact that I wrote a dissertation on a botnet called 'Conficker'. :D
Colleen
Date: 2012-06-01 12:13 pm (UTC)I'm overwhelmed with gratitude for your dedication to Colleen, and your long tribute to her. Since her death, I've counted every chance to visit a memory of her to be a wonderful gift. I've considered every tear and even nightmare to be a blessing in their ability to make me feel, temporarily, close to her once again. "Have a good cry" is a motto that, until now, has made sense for the last 10 years. Thank you for helping me reach, somehow, a deeper grief - a glimpse into what her future might have been, an anger and sadness that I haven't felt in a long time. I've been too afraid of losing any possible memory of her to fully appreciate the impact she had on others.
I often seek to understand Colleen - mainly because I so strongly admire her fortitude, charm, determination, brilliance. It didn't take her death to appreciate these qualities as you know. Why was she drawn to math and music? Did she find security in studying the rules that govern the universe? Was she courageous because of her handicap or in spite of it? Math was an outlet for her passion and fire, and an endless inlet to her natural curiosity.
My memories of Colleen are vivid and pleasant. My earliest memory - I must have been 3 - is bouncing around the kitchen on my toes saying, "I have the wiggles, too!" I remember her teasing my brother, Mark, by holding toys outside of his reach. I remember standing next to her while my mother braided our hair. Crowded in the back seat of our Volvo station wagon during the summer, the shades of our legs looked like neopolitan ice cream - pink, white and tan (Colleen, me, Meghan). Her first bike ride - a direct line from our front porch to a section of the woods that became a clearing from her repeated falls there. I remember the territorial flare-ups about personal items and space that we had as teenagers. Sitting in the strawberries and eating while she picked.
As a mother now myself, I have been able to not only re-live childhood memories, but imagine them from my parent's perspective. The proper sunlight can turn my youngest into Colleen as a baby, and thereby me into my mother. My parent's loss roots us to the eternal. She is present in my prayers for protection and wisdom, to be a guardian of us living - even though I know she would have dismissed any notion of afterlife.
In 2006, Meghan, my dad and I visited UIUC. We met up with Mike, walked her streets, visited her classrooms. We made "the walk." I don't think Colleen would have sought to "find meaning" in what happened - it simply happened and time goes on. For me, though, losing Colleen has left me with the profound longing to love others.
Your support to me, Meghan, Mark and my parents in the time since Colleen's death has helped more than you can possibly know. I hope we can keep in touch. I left Active Duty Army service in 2009 (as a military intelligence captain) to stay home with our two boys. Our third son was born on January 4th, 2012. We will be moving to Durham, North Carolina next month for my husband's next assignment.
Life is sweet.
Sincerely,
Bridget (Kilker) Rybacki
Sent from my iPad
Re: Colleen
Date: 2012-06-01 07:28 pm (UTC)The memories you shared really made me smile; it's a side of Colleen that I knew was there but didn't know a lot about. Glimpses into her past, that I think I was afraid to examine too closely. I've thought many times over the years that I should get in touch, and then I'd not really know what it was I'd say if I did. I felt bad that Colleen and I didn't talk more after she went to Illinois. I think even the last thing she messaged me was "keep in touch." But taking the circuitous route toward getting this doctorate seems to have taught me a bit more than some statistical thinking. I'm learning things--perseverance, initiative, follow-through, all wrapped up in the lessons we all learn as life marches on--that I think she already knew way more about than I did back in college. A testament to her and to you all as well.