It is such a strange feeling now. Just 2 months ago I was still having active discussions with Kexin on scientific papers and how they would apply to the problems she was working. If anything, I think it really exemplifies the person she was: a dedicated, smart, hard-working person who did not want to let her disease become a blocker to making our team successful. She wanted so much to deliver and contribute to the team, because for her, as for me and the others on the team, we all really felt like an “office family”.
Kexin and I joined the team at about the same time in 2018 and in many ways, I saw her as a little sister: we would laugh about many things, gossip a bit, but she would call me out and keep me real whenever needed. Through our conversations, I also learned a bit about her family. First of all, she loved her parents SO MUCH. She talked about her mother and father very often. I remember when she was diagnosed that she was hesitant to tell them because she knew how much pain it would cause them and she just did not want them to suffer. Also with respect to her husband, I still remember her happiness when she came back from their trip to Hawaii. She tried to hide her secret date a little bit, but she could not hold back for long because she was so in love, you could see it all over her face. Throughout our conversations both before and after the diagnosis, she just loved Xiaochang more and more. Thanks for being there for her throughout this whole time, and marrying her. I know you meant the world to her.
There are so many stories and anecdotes I could share with you, but I will limit myself to two moments that really stood out to me:
1. In 2019 we went for a team lunch in an Italian restaurant that I love. Kexin ended up ordering a pizza pepperoni as she was really hungry, but because she was ‘on a diet’, she asked the pizza to be without cheese. At one point, someone jokingly said that the pepperoni probably was just as bad, if not worse than the cheese. So when the pizza arrived, Kexin removed all the pepperoni and ended up just eating the dough with the sauce. As you can imagine, she never wanted to go back to this restaurant because the pizza was so bad ;)
2. I also remember when I brought my son Daniel to the office for the first time. He was only a few months old and he was still very uncomfortable with other people. However, with Kexin he just felt right at home. He kept on smiling and he loved how she held him close. Kexin actually did not know in advance that I was bringing him, but when I then came back from lunch with Daniel, Kexin had gone out to a shop to buy some baby cookies for him. It is just one of the many ways that she showed how much she cared about everyone she came in touch with
As a last note maybe, I want to note some of the things the people on the team associated with Kexin: “Smart”, “proud”, “makes subtle jokes”, “thoughtful”, “Caring”, “Ambitious”, “persevering”, “vibrant”, “laughter”, “always willing to help”