Kim Atwater, passed away on 15 December 2012, in San Francisco, after a prolonged four-year battle with cancer.
As she had wished, her ashes were cast into the rolling Pacific waves off Stinson Beach, San Francisco, where she spent her final year or so. Performing the ritual were members of a local surfing club.
For Kim, her final years, although ravaged by cancer, were memorable to her because of the warmth of her friends and the picturesque surf town she lived in, whose surfers she had come to know from her recuperative evening walks following bouts of chemotherapy and other forms of invasive treatments.
She died about a month shy of her 41st birthday. Three months before she passed away, I had travelled from Singapore to meet her, together with two dear fri...
Kim Atwater, passed away on 15 December 2012, in San Francisco, after a prolonged four-year battle with cancer.
As she had wished, her ashes were cast into the rolling Pacific waves off Stinson Beach, San Francisco, where she spent her final year or so. Performing the ritual were members of a local surfing club.
For Kim, her final years, although ravaged by cancer, were memorable to her because of the warmth of her friends and the picturesque surf town she lived in, whose surfers she had come to know from her recuperative evening walks following bouts of chemotherapy and other forms of invasive treatments.
She died about a month shy of her 41st birthday. Three months before she passed away, I had travelled from Singapore to meet her, together with two dear friends – Susan Thomson and Angela Chitkara. We were sitting in the living room of her two-bedroom apartment talking about our shared history in Citigroup, current affairs and life in general.
She also listened intently to the stories about our children and the future that they will inherit, a future that she knew she won’t be a part of. Nevertheless, she intrigued us with her questions and her positive views.
Her courageous display of normalcy belied the torturous pain she was enduring the fear of her impending mortality and the disappointment of her unfulfilled dreams.
In all the years we knew her, Kim was always cheerful, friendly and helpful. Even in the depths of the financial crisis, in her stressful role in the company’s internal and external communications function, she was always even-tempered. She had a calming effect on her colleagues as well as her bosses.
My best memory of her was in her better times, when she was full of vitality, glowing with beauty and good health thanks to her disciplined lifestyle and fitness regime. She was in Singapore on a business trip and after our various meetings and an official dinner, we stopped over at the Post Bar in the city’s Fullerton Hotel, a masterpiece in colonial architecture and Asian hospitality.
When she entered the noisy bar, a brief silence welcomed her as she was a sight to behold in her elegant green (I think) dress. Amidst the admiration of the bar’s many patrons she introduced me to the Cosmopolitan, a drink made famous in the TV series, Sex in the City. We ordered two more as we talked into the night, much to the envy of the bar’s many male patrons.
I was privileged to have had Kim as a friend. Though our friendship was brief, her memory will continue to live in me, reminding me about how precious life is and the power of positive thinking that Kim embodied.
Long live the spirit of Kim.
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Amie Butchko - 01 November 2019
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Just thinking of my sweet friend Kim, today and feeling her near. Happened upon this page. Love you, Kim.
Just thinking of my sweet friend Kim, today and feeling her near. Happened upon this page. Love you, Kim.
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