A remembrance of Yu Chen, the windsurfer killed by the motor boat May 31st afternoon on Lake Mendota self.madisonwi
submitted 3 hours ago by DandanZheng
As I grow older and get busier with my life, I cannot help but become more cynical, less patient, and more indifferent. Job, kids, aging parents, financial responsibilities and health issues...there are always more and more excuses for me to not care, not care for the things, the people and the world that I once passionately cared about. I see it as how the world goes and how people change, and I see it as inevitable. The only exception was Yu.
Yu had every share of grown-up burdens as all of us, and maybe more. Yet he never seemed to get cynical, and he never seemed to lose a shred of trust, passion, and compassion towards this world and all people therein. He could have his earnestness and kindness not returned or even mistreated, but he would still not change the way how he trusted others and cared about the world. He was a rather low-key person, the first one to roll up his sleeves and do the hard work, and the last one to claim any credit. It seemed almost paradoxical that such a gentle and calm person like him could be so deeply passionate. When he got excited on something, he could spend endless hours working on it, enjoying every minute of it, and rejoiced at every progress. I saw this many a times: when he talked about a new research problem he worked on; when he shared with us a new programing language he was learning to use; when I saw the scores of ski resort lift tickets that he saved attaching to his fridge door over one snow season; when his face and eyes lit up and shined as he talked about windsurfing…
And he was so very talented. For his scientific work, he had both the outstanding intelligence and the solid skill sets for it. He loved singing, and had both a great voice and touching feelings for it. He learned to snowboard, and would soon master the skills that won genuine admires from the teenage strangers that watched him snowboard. He picked up windsurfing, and soon became a great windsurfer…
It was through the passionate love that Yu had forever been embracing the life. He had lived a lot and yet he had so much more to live. Yesterday, I just watched this interview of him from 2015 by the UW-Madison Chinese Students and Scholars Association called “What is Windsurfing?”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5-sDczVKcYWhat really touched me was the part he said and I am paraphrasing- Windsurfing is actually not so easy for a complete beginner. But the joy is so immense when you are able to surf for the first time. During my years of windsurfing, the happiest moment I had was the first time when I was able to pull my sail upright. I cannot describe that kind of immense joy.
I am thinking, maybe it was because of this very sentiment, and because of the same generosity Yu had always given the world and everyone around him, that Yu had chosen to be a volunteer windsurfing instructor over the past 5 years until the moment he lost his life on the lake.
Yu had always given much more than he received. As one of his closest friends, I probably was one that benefited the most. In the past four years, Yu had driven 500 miles to run marathon or half-marathon with my husband and me in Lincoln, Nebraska for 3 times. Who still does this kind of things nowadays anyway? Won’t everyone have excuses not to come because of busy work, hectic life, or training injuries of some sort? After all, this is in-the-middle-of-nowhere Nebraska and a small-potato race. But Yu said he would come, then he always came. Never had any child of his own and being the only child of his family, Yu would always bring my boys the coolest, most fun toys, best suitable for their ages, that they would love the most out of the piles of toys they ever received from others including ourselves. This really always touched me because I know how clueless I was whenever I needed to buy a present for a girl or for a boy older than my eldest boy’s age. I had no idea. That’s how I know and feel, with what kind of love to our boys that their uncle Yu was researching and selecting the best presents for them. While we often forgot his birthday, we could always count on birthday cards from Yu with heart-felt words and wishes. While we often put off that call to Yu to check on his progress as we said we would do, he was always cheering for us on every small progress we had made.
While the rest of us picked up cynicism and hypocrisy as we grew older, our best friend Yu seemed to remain the innocent trusting boy that every seasoned guy once was. The way he always kept his promise made me think of an ancient Chinese story that I read in my childhood. A man agreed to meet his friend on a bridge but it rained too hard and his friend didn’t show. This guy kept on waiting in the rain, holding on to a post but refused to leave until the rising flood washed him away. What a silly guy. I probably thought to myself when I read that as a little girl. This otherwise long forgotten silly story came to me in the recent years sometimes when I thought of Yu. In my mind, Yu was that person that forever held onto his promises, and held onto his convicted belief of pure kindness, love and trust in the rising water of bad and evil. I had thought I would keep on watching to see if this man would also change, and eventually become another one of us. I had thought maybe when we were all old in the nursing homes, our lives would finally slow down so that we could be washed pure again, and we could return the devotion Yu had given us as a friend.
It is our greatest loss that we had lost the one friend that we knew we could 100% count on to have our backs, regardless of the circumstances, out of the many great friends we were fortunate to have. The other world is better now, as this world has just lost its one-of-the-only-kind masterpiece, at the prime of his life, leaving all the dreams yet to fulfill, all the passion yet to experience, and all the love and kindness yet to give. Rest in peace, Yu. You will forever be missed.
