I want to share with everyone how truly grateful I am for your love, support, memories, and words of comfort. I look forward to seeing many of you at the visitation, but I know that I won’t be able to string many coherent words together tonight, so I wanted to reach out and thank every single one of you now. Hai was truly a wonderful person and my world will never be the same without him. He was remarkable and unselfish, and the very best thing in my life,
No one could’ve ever been a better companion than Hai was for me. He is my best friend, my soul mate and the one & only love of my life. Hai was the best provider anyone could ever be, and I don’t only mean financially and emotionally, but he always supported me and everything that I wanted to try, and he even gave me his family when I proclaimed that I was a 36-year-old orphan. I couldn’t have asked for a better family, either. It’s very hard, not having any family of your own, but his family really made me feel like I wasn’t losing out at all. They took me in, and became as close to me as any biological family could be for anyone. I am so grateful to them for all of their love and support.
I still remember when I met Hai in 1993. I just started some Eastfield class that was already over my head. The first two classes I sat next to someone who was really a bother. So, for the next class, I decided to get there early and sit somewhere completely different. I remember walking into class that day and looking for someone who looked interesting, and safe. I sat down next to Hai and had no way of knowing that he would be my husband someday. As I struggled with the class, he offered to coach me along and help prepare me for an upcoming exam. The first place that we ever went together, outside of Eastfield, was to study at Taco Cabana. It was the first time I had ever been inside a Taco Cabana, and I probably drove him crazy because I wouldn’t stop talking about how horribly pink it was. I never realized it until many months later, but that casual study break ended up being our first date.
Not long after we officially started dating, he began referring to me as his trailer park princess...we were from two completely different worlds. I was horribly uncultured and my taste in food was limited to restaurants with a drive through and a dollar menu, but that was before he came into my life. I had so little experience with any of the great things in this world before I met him. He put up with me in spite of the fact that I didn’t go to barbecue restaurants, steakhouses, seafood restaurants, and that I had never even tried sushi before. With his encouragement, he opened me up to so many new experiences, not only different types of cuisine, but music, theater and even things like Cirque du Soleil and how beautiful photography could be. Hai did like to travel, and I regret that I never did want to do that very much. I am so grateful to all of his friends who went on road trips with him so that he could have those experiences. I know he treasured all of them. He always came back with such wonderful, funny stories. You all meant so much to Hai and I know that we will all miss him very dearly. Nothing will ever be the same without him.
