Today I turn 33. I had a whole joke planned how I was going to say it’s my 21st birthday in hexidecimal, but I’m not feeling in a joking mood. On Sunday, Rannie Yoo (although she left the world Rannie Reid) finally lost her battle with cancer and left the world surrounded by loved ones, leaving the world a sadder place. I’ve been tossing around in my head what I was going to say in this post. I knew it was going to happen. As soon as we found out she had cancer and the type and stage of it, we knew it was coming, but it only really started to hit me hard this last week, when we knew the end was near.
I can say without a doubt that of all the people I’m not related by blood to, Rannie was most directly responsible for my life happening the way it did. If it were not for her, I most likely would not have been an officer of Cal Animage, which introduced me to a circle of friends that I still have to this day. Without her, I would not have staffed Fanimecon, nor Anime Expo, which between the two caused me to meet more people than I can count and affected me in immeasurable ways. But more than anything, Rannie was the first person I ever really got past an initial crush and got to the plateau of friendship without confusion that existed for years.
Just now I opened up the private diary file that I kept before I had this LiveJournal, which contained things which were for my eyes only. In the section about Rannie, it contained stories that I had long forgotten about the path from random person to friend, most of which are not appropriate to share. The one I can share is the story of how she and I met… maybe. We don’t know for sure, but we were both fairly certain, but the first time I met Rannie was a Saturday morning in Bowles Hall in the Dungeon (a.k.a. the TV room) in our freshman year. I was there to watch cartoons, and turned the tv on before I realized there was a girl asleep on one of the couches. The TV woke her, and we ended up talking a bit while we watched TV. I never caught her name, but years later this came up in conversation, and Rannie says she had that same thing happen to her, and what are the odds of that happening twice?
This isn’t very coherent. I don’t suppose it could be. For the last week, whenever I stop thinking or doing anything, the space is filled with sadness and tears. Part of me should be scared that someone my age could die of cancer. But most of me is just devastated that I’ll never see her again. Any person should be happy to have touched as many lives as she touched. The outpouring of sentiment from people I’ve never met just goes to show that she continued to have an influence on other people past the point where we were hanging out regularly. I feel sadness for the people whose lives she was destined to brighten in the future that will never have that chance.
I should stop before I ramble too much. Tomorrow is going to be hard — I still haven’t decided if I will tell my coworkers what I’m going through or if I should just push through it and keep my mind occupied. I will try to have a happy birthday. Being sad goes against what she lived for.
When life gives you the raspberry, give the raspberry right back.
See you next time around, Rannie.