The World's Greatest Jie Jie
Reflections on the Beautiful Life of Sushu Wang
On Sunday, April 16th, 2023, my jie jie Sushu Wang passed…
Damn :( I was just on the phone with her, it feels like. Somehow, I missed posts on Facebook sharing about her passing. So, on April 21, 2023, my ge ge Jon Jon, noticing my odd silence called me and filled me in on the tragedy.
I can’t tell y’all how heartbroken I am…
I’m posting this on the day of her memorial, but I want to be clear that this reflection on my Jie Jie’s beautiful life in no way intends to pose as a eulogy or exaggerate how long we’ve known each other. But a deep voice within is telling me I must write about my friend, to testify to how, since meeting her on Zoom in 2020, and in person in 2021, my life has changed for good.
Our friendship started on a Wednesday in March of 2020 when I walked into a prayer meeting at a Chinese Baptist Church in Kansas. I knew virtually no one there but I was welcomed in, all of us masked up not yet knowing the full severity of Covid. It was right after that prayer meeting that we learned schools would go virtual for the rest of the semester. When the World Health Organization informed us of the new life the world was being forced into, my new Chinese friends invited me to stay tapped into community on Zoom with the church while I was still in Kansas.
And it was on Zoom where I met Sushu. I still remember the first words she ever spoke to me (I’m not kidding). They were “wo ye hui jiao ni Zhongwen (I can also teach you Mandarin)!” She said this because my ge ge Jon Jon was telling the Zoom participants that I was learning Mandarin, and in jubilation, Sushu responds with offering to one-up her good friend, Jon. For some reason, that moment filled me with excitement to meet her in the flesh, not because of her willingness to teach me Mandarin, but because of the quality of her warmth and welcome, and the obvious love her community had for her, which was not the slightest diminished even through a video chat platform.
So, for a year, Sushu and I connected through online Bible studies and social media (particularly Instagram DM’s—y’all I’ve been reading through them, and I am undone)… Several months into our friendship we would share book recommendations with each other, and in the summer of 2021, we got to finally meet up! She had recommended to me the books Pachinko and Everything I Never Told You and they were the first things we talked about when we saw each other. The Chinese church was reopening in phases and started to meet creatively outside. Sushu inadvertently (alongside Pastor Brian and Jon Jon, and the Mak bros of course) became my liaison in the church community and fam she did it masterfully. When I was with Sushu, I was no longer nervous about making a bad impression, nor did I feel embarrassed about how little Mandarin I knew.
This is what Jie Jie’s do. They welcome and they sit next to you as if you are the most important person to them when you are around them. I’m not the only one who’s felt this from Sushu. She could make an aggravated kindergartner feel at ease just with her smile. She could turn a chit-chatter like me into a person who listens by the way she modeled curiosity and asked thoughtful questions regarding people’s concerns, beliefs, and hurts. She fully gave herself over to the Way of Love week after week confidently setting herself in the grace of God and settling those who were in her presence.
I miss her so much. It’s wild to me that I’m so confident in calling her Jie Jie (older sister) when our paths only crossed for 3 years, but all those top golf hangs, dinners and movie nights really made space for us to get somewhat close, and I’ll never not cherish that.
On my birthday, she couldn’t make it to the get-together, but she bought the cake for it and made a birthday hat covered in glitter to make me feel special. She, though a regular human, did not walk regular. It’s almost like she had subtle superhero powers, always providing laughter and sense to conversations and rambunctious arguments.
She was also incredibly hospitable. She would host game nights at her house, and the times I was able to make it, we would stay for hours. I miss those conversations. I miss her incisive questions. I miss her relevant wisdom. I miss her compassionate gaze.
Every once in a while, Sushu would send me memes of funny Midwesternisms and other humorous videos that we would both cry laughing at and I’m realizing now how much I’ll miss those too.
What made Sushu so special to me was her genuine way of loving God and people and it was expressed through so much joy each time we were around each other. Don’t get me wrong, she had disappointments in life that she shared, she had health concerns that were unfair, and she still showed up daily, living to the fullest not ever giving life a chance to tear her so down that joy would elude her. The joy of the Lord truly was (and now is more so) her strength.
Quite honestly, talk about a resurrected body and a supernatural path forward of grieving that usually emerges in Christian spaces in lieu of the death of someone I love doesn’t always sit well with me. The grief right now is heavy. Hope is not something I’m able to jump to with great fervor and conviction no matter how hard I try. Yet, there is a small comfort, one that bursts through my tears, encouraging me that the laughs and stories that Jie Jie curated here on earth will not be extinguished in the new one.
When I consider the implications of believing and hoping in the resurrection of our bodies in the wake of Jesus’ Easter victory, I don’t let it make me pretend that the sting is any less brutal, but it renews me with imagination and gives me the courage to laugh and be hospitable in light of the finished work of a loving Savior whose evidence has been made even more visible through my friend, and it helps me to honor the legacy of the world’s greatest Jie Jie. My life is in no small way has been changed by your presence, my dear sister. Try not to be too funny without me until I cath up, aight? :)
There’s so much I can say, Sushu, but I can’t wait to show you how good my Mandarin eventually gets one day. I love you.
