Sharlyn & Sudhir

remember her

"she was the same old Sharlyn - full of life, pep, vitality, and eagerness to do and try everything.? that's how i will always remember her."

some sad news 2004

"It's with greatest sadness and heaviest heart that I am contacting you.

Sharlyn is no longer amongst us. It's a long story.

........

She disappeared on the 18th late afternoon and was found behind her house on the 25th early afternoon. She had been dead for quite some time."

Me and Sharlyn

I met Sharlyn during a 6-week business trip from Tokyo, Japan to Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. We were both involved in a big project between Cincinnati Bell Information Systems and Japan’s NTT. She was a translator. I was a programmer from Information Creative Engineering Inc. We had a mutual friend, Christy Tobin, and along with others started going out after work for drinks. One highlight of the trip was attending a Jimmy Buffett concert, who to my surprise, was and probably still is extremely big in Ohio. I got a spark, a buzz, from being around Sharlyn. She always had to be the center of attention, she always was organizing things, two qualities that I shared with her. She was open and warm but at the same time secretive and cold, a complex woman. After the 6-week assignment, I found myself back in Tokyo and eventually Sharlyn returned too. We continued to organize events for friends, since we both did not enjoy being alone and needed to be surrounding by friends to feel important, to feel happy. My feelings grew stronger and stronger for her as time went by. She introduced me to her best friends, Scott & Mary, who quickly became my friends too. She went on a trip to Nagoya to attend sumo with my very good friend Andy Fry and my very good friend and housemate, Susan Panarese, and me. We had super seats and a wonderful time. It was my first sumo tourney outside Tokyo. I think my last activity with Sharlyn was attending a Glenn Frey concert. We were on the outs by then, I was totally obsessed with her, I loved her, I wanted her love, I was probably obsessed with the image in my mind for what I saw and wanted in Sharlyn. But it was not to be. I didn’t expect her to show up. It was to be three of us, since I had a gotten a ticket for one my longest Japanese national friends, who I nicknamed, Chabo. The concert started and I figure she isn’t coming, and then during the show, she arrived. After the concert, Chabo had to bolt but Sharlyn was interested in getting a bite to eat, so yahoo, it was just the two of us. I was desperate, I asked her a 'question', that I have only asked one other person later in my life. I was not ready for that level of commitment but I was desperate not to lose Sharlyn. Naturally she said no. I think she had already been on her trip to Thailand with Susan, Julie, and Molly. I think she had already met the man she would fall completely in love with and later, I suspect, perhaps obsessed for in a way I had obsessed in her, life is strange…

How do I feel now? Angry. Sad. It was a total waste. She tried to give what she got, I suppose. I wish she had left that island after the first struggle. She should have ran to her old friends. She should have found Scott and Mary and crawled into their bed, where it was warm and safe. I suppose they could have helped her. I am not sure I could have, but there is no doubt in my mind that I wish I had the chance to help her. It is too late now. But this type of tragedy teaches us that life is short, treasure it, live it, it will be over sooner than you think. Perhaps when your friends start to die, you feel your mortality. The immortal mind set of young is now a memory. What do they say in New England? Live Free or Die. It seems that she could not free herself from her demons, they ate away at her, so sad.

"And in the end
The love you take
Is equal to the love you make."
--John Lennon & Paul McCartney