I was a colleague of Remco's at Google. Actually, Remco was my 'mentor' at work. When you start at Google, you get assigned a mentor to help you with the mountains of things you need to know when you start. Normally, mentors need to be at Google for a few years, but Remco had only been at Google for a few months before I joined. He was just so good at his job, that it wasn't a problem for him to taken on being a mentor. While he helped me out considerably in the context of work, it was of course all the personal moments that we had that I"ll remember. I remember once his car was in the shop, and he asked if I could drive him to get it. I was still driving around in my junker car from grad school, which had a huge crack that went across the entire windshield. As we were chatting about it, I said, "I've never understood how you can drive around with a crack all the way across the windshield like this," and he said, "uh, yeah, I don't think you can really". It was a funny moment (I think you had to be there). But I did shortly afterwards replace my windshield. I remember when he told me he had developed brain cancer. It was shocking to hear, of course. He said that the doctors believed he had 10 years or so. In the past few years, after he stopped working at Google, he was always so positive about his condition. I never saw him beaten down by it. Even after he became partially paralyzed, his attitude was always upbeat. Even after it had become somewhat clear that he exhausted all his treatment avenues, he still carried on. I never understood how he could do it, but I'll always remember that he did.
Good by my friend,
- john