Losing Those Who Matter Most
It's difficult in the moment, and that moment can last decades.
Sree with his mom, Lekha in Tokyo 1971; Zach (right), with his mom, Brenda and sis Jessica in Schroeder, Minnesota, in 1991. Both write about their late moms below.
Sree’s newsletter is produced with Zach Peterson (@zachprague), with a tech tip from Robert S. Anthony (@newyorkbob). Many thanks to our sponsor, Armory Square Ventures.
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A FEW SHORT WEEKS AGO MY MOTHER DIED AT THE AGE OF 73. Lekha Sreenivasan was loving, talented, beautiful, and more. But, to me, she was “Amma.” The first person you call for when anything goes wrong. From a scraped knee to anything life-changing, nothing is out of the reach of a loving mother.
She was proud to share a birthday with Mahatma Gandhi (who was born 80 years to the day before she was). Gandhi once said, “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others,” and my mother started Karuna Charities in that spirit. At her funeral in Thiruvananthapuram, the Kerala Governor, Chief Minister and other VIPs were in attendance. But what truly mattered were the scores of poor and disabled folks — all beneficiaries of Amma's assistance — who came to pay their respects, in tears.
Everyone leaves a legacy, but few have one that touches multitudes. This is who my mother was. Among the ways you know my mom had a wonderful life is the fact that her daughters-in-law wrote far better tributes than I ever could. Here's Roopa Unnikrishnan and Sharavati Choksi. There's so much more to say about Amma (including in her memoirs, "Better Half of Diplomacy," that she was putting the finishing touches on when she was admitted to the ICU), but I will leave you with this lovely essay that my dad, T.P. Sreenivasan, wrote in the midst of his grief.
Meanwhile, I’m 52 and losing Amma has been devastating. I can’t imagine what it’s like to lose a mother at a far younger age. My pal Zach Peterson writes eloquently below about what it’s like to lose a mom at 18.
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MY MOTHER BRENDA DIED WHEN I WAS 18 YEARS OLD, in the spring before I was set to leave home to attend university just a few miles from her house in the suburban Twin Cities. It was impossible for me.
My parents divorced when I was very young, and I grew up with my dad, a single father until he re-married when I was about 10. It was, as divorces go, a seemingly good one. I spent a lot of time at my mom’s — they communicated with each other, usually exchanged major holidays, I went there for long weekends, and I spent the end of most summers with her after summer baseball ended in July. They both grew up in a very small town in northern Minnesota, and her family and my dad remain close to this day.
But, she was sick. Lupus was eating her body, morphing her joints into mangled webs of broken tissue. There were surgeries — so many surgeries — blood transfusions, and hospital visits were a regular part of our lives. She loved baseball, and my memories of going to Twins games (we attended a World Series game in 1991 when the Twins won it all), watching Cubs day games on WGN, have never really left. She also had to take a box of pills every day just to be able to move and function, and the fact is that I was a part of all of it, a very active part. I was 14 or 15 when it really became real that she simply would not make it.
Rather than shield me from that with a raft of “It will be alright,” she talked to me about it. I knew what was happening. I was there when her team of specialists were discussing the very real possibility that the latest experimental medicine may just not work, and the implications were that she would die. We talked about it as peers, and it may be the greatest gift she ever gave me.
I still remember the day she died as if it happened last week. My step father was unable to get in touch with my dad at work, but he was able to reach my girlfriend’s mom. She was waiting for me outside of school immediately after she got the call. My dad rushed to get me and we drove, fast, to the hospital in Minneapolis. That night, very late, I held her hand as it all ended.
More than two decades later, while staying with a good friend and his family, I was faced with the reality that I had never fully reckoned with my mother’s death. I have two children, 8 and 12, and we were on a camping trip across the American west (here’s the Instagram profile for the trip) when we stopped in California to spend time with my good friend.
The first day we were there, his oldest daughter (6 at the time) was diagnosed with the exact disease that had claimed my mom’s life so many years before. Typically, lupus manifests itself later in life, but all the signs were there and now they had the official diagnosis.
I spiraled, and the following months were a rollercoaster of past trauma, depression, and what I can only describe as shut-downs. This was in the spring of 2022, and I have yet to fully come back to something resembling “normal,” whatever that is. I lost work, was distant, my emotions were unpredictable, and there were days when the very notion of waking up the next day seemed like a burden over which I could not prevail.
In the time since my mom died all those years ago, I had gone to therapy, tried various antidepressants, and really anything else one can think of. But, I had not let myself simply…feel it all. Feel that sadness, that gaping hole that would never again be filled. My dad is great, and my stepmom is too. They’re nothing but supportive and positive, and I’m so lucky for that. But, the urge to call my mom and just tell her that my son is good at math, or that my daughter caught her first fish, or any other completely mundane thing, is not gone. It never will be.
We all process loss differently, and I’m not naive to the fact that many, many people simply don’t have the support network that I have. The one and only piece of advice I can give is to do everything you can to find a space where you can let yourself be sad. Let yourself cry. Let yourself have a bad day. It’s better to feel it all than to just “everything’s fine” yourself into oblivion. It’s fine to not be fine, and I wish I had fully understood that over the last 23 years. I didn’t, and it almost killed me.
— Zach & Sree
Many of you have asked about making a donation to Karuna Charities and, if you are inclined to do so, here's the website for the NYC chapter and the one for the DC chapter. And Zach recommends we all know about 988lifeline.org.
A Message from Armory Square Ventures
We thank our friends at @Preqin this week for including Armory Square Ventures in their 2023 global private equity league tables.
The company distills industry-leading data for the alternatives industry and ranked us #6 for a 2018 investment we made in portfolio company ACV Auctions. More here on that founding story.
ACV Auctions's trajectory was a long one, certainly. For us it was also a milestone and marker reaffirming our belief that great companies can be built outside the major hubs. We still believe that. Morehereon how we're preparing for the launch of our third fund.
Onward + Until next time,
Team ASV
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Digimentors Tech Tip
Iridium Goes Up, Up and Away with Satellite-Linked Smart Companion
By Robert S. Anthony
Each week, veteran tech journalist Bob Anthony shares a tech tip you don’t want to miss. Follow him @newyorkbob.
It wasn’t a great week to announce a new satellite-linked device due to the overshadowing news coverage of an alleged Chinese spy balloon flying over the US, but Iridium Communications Inc.’s new “smart companion” for mobile devices promises a new level of global communications for those who really need it.
The new Iridium GO! exec smart companion not only allows smartphone, tablet and laptop users to make phone calls and transfer data over satellite connections from any point in the world, but also supports popular apps like WhatsApp, Twitter, Viber, Signal, Gmail and basic email.
During a product launch webinar, Iridium, which operates a large constellation of satellites, said the unit is aimed at airplane pilots, boaters, hikers, farmers, first responders and others who need reliable communications in areas not covered by cell phones. “We’ve been working on this product a long time,” said Iridium CEO Matt Desch.
Unlike the older Iridium GO!, a smaller, slower device which also provided satellite connectivity for smartphones, the Iridium GO! exec has a touchscreen in addition to its Bluetooth and Wi-Fi wireless connectivity.
The 8-by-8-by-1-inch weatherized, ruggedized unit weighs 2.65 pounds and provides up to 6 hours talk and data time or 24 hours on standby per charge, according to Iridium. It’s basically used like a Wi-Fi hotspot and can be used wirelessly or via a built-in Ethernet port.
According to a company representative, while the old Iridium GO!, first introduced in 2014 and still available, takes about 45 seconds to establish a satellite connection, the Iridium GO! exec does so in about two seconds. The Iridium GO! exec has a built-in microphone and a speaker, thus allowing it to be used as a smartphone even when not connected to another device.
With data speeds of up to 22 Kbps for uploads and 88 Kbps for downloads (yes, well under 1Mbps), the Iridium GO! exec is meant for essential voice communications and data transfers like GPS locations and weather data, but still offers enough throughput for short social media posts according to the company. While those speeds may seem slow, the Iridium GO! exec’s download speed is actually 40 times faster than the old Iridium GO!, according to Iridium.
Iridium’s data manager app lets users set time and data limits on satellite connections to help keep airtime costs down, the company said. In addition, services optimized for satellite connections like PredictWind’s PredictMail, an email service, compress data before using satellite connections.
The Iridium GO! exec is available now and is sold by retailers, not direct from Iridium. A quick search found outlets selling the unit at prices starting at $1,600.
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Sree / Zach, thank you so much for sharing. May their memories be a blessing.
Thank you Zach and Sree for sharing your feelings so well.
I have a friend whose father was not a good person; he died when she was in her 20s, and she doesn't feel bad that he died or miss him.
So in a way those of us who loved and lost parents to whom we have strong positive emotions (among the negative ones we're bound to have as well) are blessed. The other day my youngest grandson did something especially endearing, and watching the video, I said out loud, "mom, you should see this."