Goodbye Rannie.

In Memoriam of my friend Rannie Yoo.

My sweet friend Rannie Yoo died this weekend. I found out on Facebook. First, I saw my friend Ted (who I used to work with at G4 Media in LA) post something about missing her and well, I considered it strange as the last I knew they lived in close proximity to one another. The post struck me as odd and in the back of my mind I said to myself -  “Maybe she’s dead?” I shook off that idea like a dog shakes water off of its coat. A preposterous notion. Later in the day however, another friend mentioned she’d been thinking about Rannie Yoo a lot and that she will be missed. That’s when I knew she was gone. But how could this young, vivacious, beautiful and – in her on unique way – elegant women be gone?

Cancer.

Meeting Rannie.

I met Rannie while working at G4 Media in 2002. She worked for a PR agency in the game industry. Based on some of what I’ve read online I think this may have been around the time she got into the industry. We were both freshmen in the biz and we became fast friends.

On my list of game industry relationships to handle were a few of Rannie’s clients. She became my point person for those companies and I became hers for G4. I was under pressure to make a good impression with her. That was, for all intents and purposes my job. I was an ambassador to the game industry and Rannie would be my guest at our tower of gaming television in West Los Angeles. Turns out I had very little to worry about. She had this way of putting the anxious portion of my persona at ease and really – any embarrassing mishaps that happened along the way, she made them all okay. She didn’t, as they say, sweat the small stuff.

In the beginning our working relationship and budding friendship took shape over phone and email. She lived and worked in San Francisco; I was in Los Angeles. I was very excited to meet my new friend in person. And the day came. She flew to Los Angeles on business and brought one of her clients to be a guest on our shows. I gave them a tour of the office and escorted them to the studio.

Rannie and I chatted and hung out while the the show producers conducted interviews with our other guest. I remember at one point she plopped herself down on my lap, kind of out of nowhere. We’d gotten close, but hey, were we really this close? Here I am, trying to do my best to keep up the best in professional appearances and she puts me on the spot! She made this modest Roman Catholic boy blush! .

Truth is, she was perfectly and charmingly flirtatious while never losing site of why she was there. She expressed her self-confidence and comfort in her own skin – the same characteristic that provided the  soothing, calming quality she owned, the one that made just being around her something worth doing. She really managed to strike the perfect balance between professionalism and fun and I appreciated that about her.

We’d have many more times together over the next couple years, at trade shows, office visits, etc. But there is one day that stands in my mind as the definition of who Rannie Yoo was for me: November 24, 2009.

Given Shelter.

November 23rd, 2003. I drive to San Francisco in my Kia Ferrari (as I like to call it) to spend a couple days with a girl I dated. I arrive and it becomes apparent immediately this trip is not going to work out the way I hoped. Turns out after I travel 6 or so hours to see this girl she doesn’t want to see me. (She could have mentioned that to me before I got to her place, but that is beside the point.) I am now out on my ass the next day, in my car, hundreds of miles with nowhere to go and I’m too cheap to pay for a hotel. And what’s worse is it’s the day before my birthday. I’m feeling, as you might imagine, pretty low.

So I call Rannie and tell her what’s going on. She insists I stay at her place. She clears time in her schedule and treats me to dinner for my birthday at a fine restaurant. Later on she vacates the premises of her small studio apartment so I can have my privacy. She makes sure I am comfortable, gives me her bed to sleep in and goes to stay with a friend. I feel as comfortable as I would in my own home. She took an otherwise unfortunate set of circumstances and turned them around for me. I later sent her flowers as a thank you gift for her accommodations. She in turn took a photo of her holding the flowers and sent it to me in an email to show her appreciation back. It was just the kind of class act she was.

But it’s what she takes me to do between dinner and parting for sleep that matters most…

A Kindness.

After dinner she takes me to the top of the city, to Lincoln Park and the WWII Holocaust memorial. She quietly leads me to the memorial, with it’s powerful, bone-chilling sculptures of people who died senselessly and asks me, no – softly pleads with me – to get a truly profound sense of just how fortunate I am to be alive, free and healthy. Forget about the fact that my plans went awry. Forget about the girl that blew me off. Embrace life. Be happy now.

Is that a thoughtful act or what? Who does that? Really. Ask yourself. When is the last time that someone actually went out of their way to substitute demonstration for preaching and showed you their point in such a profound and meaningful way. And for no other reason than to benefit you (and you alone) out of love.

I can’t say that the lesson of that night cut through the echos and echos of angry razor wire I keep around myself out of Irish spite and habit. But I will say this: Rannie you burned that moment into my memory and you are as alive in this room with me right now in the holodeck of my mind as you ever were in space-time. You, and your reminder to just be happy dammit, will be with me always.

In Perspective.

To say this girl will be missed is an understatement. I can just imagine all the heartbreak and crying and tears that must be flowing right now from her family and co-workers she was so close with; all the people who’s lives she touched. I know they’re out there and I know they’re justifiably heartbroken.

You have to understand something. This wasn’t just any person. This was a very important person in the video game industry. When I say VIP I don’t mean she was making billion dollar decisions or designing the next Super Mario Bros. I mean she was the kind of important that made you feel good about yourself and reminded you you’re a human being, not just a cog in a machine. Not just a part of some corporate profit margin. She cared about her work, her clients and you. She cared about you.

The people will miss her. Blogs on the internet are already lit up with the news of her passing. She’s never going to be replaced. It’s touching to see how many people were enlivened by her.

My Grief.

I sat with the news for a while when I found out what happened to her. I set my iPhone down, stood up and wept. I ran up stairs, grabbed my guitar, sang and played to her. Then I set out to write down my thoughts. And here they are.

The way I feel now is a shade like the way I felt when I read “Bridge to Terabithia” as a child. The boy (protagonist) loses his friend, when she falls from a rope swinging over a ravine. I felt my heart break for the first time when I read that. The message I got: “The people you love are going to die; they’re going to leave you and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

I just went back to read the synopsis of that book as I haven’t revisited it since childhood. There is something in there about the protagonist being able to get through the grief at the loss of his friend through the courage and love that she had given him. In a way, that’s a probably all too accurate summation of what this is for me… her leaving the Earth plane. We’ve got to just keep going on without her, but what better example of how to do that than the one she gave? She’d just want us to be happy. And that’s what I think we’ll do. Face it, she wants you to smile when you think of her. You know it.

All and all time moves on, days tick by and friends who give you these significant – if not all too often sparse – moments of meaningfulness to reflect on, well, they drift in other directions on the Pacific Ocean of life. She drifted one way, I drifted another. Years went by and nothing. And then, one day – that day being yesterday- I got the news she died.

That’d be the end of the story in most cases but not this one. There’s a surprise at the end: I thought of her and I at the Holocaust memorial this weekend – the weekend she died – before I had ever heard the news. I hadn’t thought about her in years. But here it was, out of nowhere, sitting in the forefront of my mind. I had that visceral memory of her come into my head and light up my brain like a fuse. It made me think to myself: “Hmph. That was an interesting time with her. I wonder what she was really trying to tell me (because I just didn’t seem to get it at the time).” What were the chances that memory was going to run the labyrinth of file cabinets in my subconscious and “just happen” to bubble to the surface?

The older I get the more adverse I become to believing things like this are coincidences. Instead, I see it as this: that burst of consciousness around her and I that night was her blowing me a goodbye kiss, thanking me for being her friend, saying she’ll always think of me and to remember life is too beautiful to waste, so just live and love. Just like when she sent me that photo of her holding the flowers I gave her. She was nothing else if not gracious.

Rannie, if you can hear me, I want you to know that I don’t expect to turn every single angsty little cell around to “happy” in one fell swoop. I want you to know that I get you now. Thanks for the reminder. I’ll do better from now on. I promise.

In Closing.

She loved her friends. She loved her work. She loved nerdy boys. And she loved life.

And I love her for sharing her warm heart with me.

Thank you Rannie. These flowers, are for you…

Your friend,

Todd

Links About Rannie

• From her husband
• From her employer
• http://www.gamingnexus.com/FullNews/Rest-in-Peace-Rannie-Yoo/Item14774.aspx
• http://www.1up.com/do/blogEntry?bId=9007964&publicUserId=4561231