from May 2018
Working today, I was thinking of how happy I was to have dinner with my wife and old friends Sam Nugent and Todd Stutts a few weeks back. We hoisted a toast our dear departed friend, Jane Alden. I was so thankful that we were able to talk in person about our love for Jane.
Working out of my house has its advantages, but when I found out that Jane had passed suddenly, unexpectantly, I felt for the first time really isolated. I didn't have anyone close to Jane to grieve with, except electronically, remotely.
I finally, deeply, found the purpose of funerals. To be around people who love the people you love, an opportunity to say "I love him/her, too, and I'm hurting."
It's been three years, but, out of the blue, here I am, missing Jane a lot.
LinkedIn: it's a professional forum, yes? Lots of advantages, lots of connections.
Let me use it for something really important to me. Let me use it to reach others who may have known and loved Jane. I love her, too, and her absence still hurts.
I saw Jane most often at Conferences and had the privilege of introducing her for a few of her lectures. I always said that Jane had the hardest of the hard jobs: evaluating new technology, rolling it out globally and being responsible for keeping it profitable. Watching her speak, I always thought to myself “I need to be more like Jane”. The epitome of professionalism. Genuine. Warm. And always the lucky accidental recipient of brilliant people working around her. All the credit was everybody else’s, as if she had nothing to do with it. She had everything to do with it.
I have lots of good examples in my life and in my profession. I generally think along the lines of “that’s good. I need to adopt that habit or technique.” Oh so rarely do I meet a person that I admire whole cloth.
A torrent of brilliance, wisdom and grace.
I need to be more like Jane. Our profession is much emptier without her. I really miss her.
