Caspi

She was such a gift.

She was such a gift.

She was such a gift to feel and experience and know. A being so wonderful and honest and tender. You grieve because you miss the form her love was in. The immediate and warm and furry and sniffing and attentive and must-lick-the-salt-of-the-sweat-on-your-skin-after-a-run corporeal form of her love. With her perfectly triangular and spiked antenna-like ears; her wet black nose and her clear brown eyes; her midnight border-collie-black and new-sneaker-white feet and crescent-moon-tipped scorpion tail. It was never in one form, though. It is a gift to recognize how this kind of love changes. It changes but it does not disappear. It transforms into something else. But it is still love. And in grief it grows. And if you handle the grief constructively, it does not metastasize into more sadness; it blossoms into more love.

That grief did not start today, though. Two years after the death of your brother George, while you were immersed in grief, knowing full well it is the price of love, a cost you pay some unknown time later, you stood before the register at the Brooklyn animal rescue at which you found her so randomly, so fortunately, and placed your credit card on the table.

You said, “I am not leaving without her. I do not need to sleep on it. I am not leaving without this dog. You can close up shop and come back tomorrow, and I will still be here. Because I am not leaving without her.”

And they smiled a knowing smile, understanding she was right for you and you for her and all the love you would have and what would come from it. How generous they were to sell you love at a sort of discount, for you to pay the full price through grief on a later day, for a journey that was itself always the reward irrespective of the destination. What depth of feeling this heretofore four-legged stranger-to-you would bring in time, knowing full well you would love her, your first dog, regardless.

Yes, that grief, that anticipatory grief, started the day you adopted her. It had to. A seven-year-old dog on a Saturday in April 2016. A senior dog with a sparse health record, the result of having been homeless on the streets of a capital city of a foreign nation you hardly knew. Baku. Azerbaijan. Where she learned to love humans who would feed her and avoid those who would harm her. Where she birthed a beautiful litter of puppies in captivity just prior to boarding a plane to New York. To Brooklyn. To America. To the Bakuli family.

In her physical form, so regal, so stately, so tender. Whatever illnesses or sicknesses she had would lie in wait. But she would not present many. She would live well beyond her 16th birthday, her age a surprise to almost everyone who met her; a deep well of energy and loving attention filling every interaction right to the brim and no further.

Almost ten years by your side through a pandemic, through work from home, through numerous spring park visits and summer road trips and winter beach days. The smells and sounds and tastes of the city and the country and the seaside. Baku. Brooklyn. Manhattan. Amherst. An Azerbaijani street dog in America with family from Kenya, Cambodia, and Norway.

Last night, on Saturday, December 13, 2025, Caspi died in my arms at home in New York. She drew her final breath following a two-week battle with a liver cancer diagnosed after 11 hours in the emergency room on Thanksgiving Day. To her last moments she was so wonderful, so affectionate, and so tender. I could write 50,000 words about her, my friend and canine companion and colleague and family member for almost a decade, basically my whole thirties; about the life we had and lessons we learned. About the love she catalyzed wherever she went and even in places she never visited. But for now, I will write just five: She was such a gift.

March 15, 2025

When Mike was on his deathbed in 2010 in Wisconsin, I wrote him a letter from my office in New York. Perhaps it was naive of me to think I could use words to bargain with biology. I have a copy of that letter. This is what it says:

Dear Coleridge,

As you very well know, Fitzgerald once wrote:

If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away.

I have always associated those words with you, Mike.  Through gestures grand and subtle you have consistently shown yourself to be the toughest, most thoughtful, most loyal and hardest-working friend I have.  And one of the most fun and considerate people I have ever had the privilege of knowing.  You are going to fight through this, rest up, and be better than before.  And when you are ready, we’re going on more adventures.

Even though I am not in Madison with you, I am there with you every step of the way as you heal and get better. An hour doesn’t pass without me thinking of you and the fun we’ve had and the fun we will have.  You are loved and supported by friends and family literally all around the world.  And every day I hope you are aware of it, because we are all aware of it.

So take your time, big guy, and rest up--because we’re going on more adventures.

Your friend,

Wordsworth

I’m grateful I still have that letter, even though it's a hard read. But there’s another letter I wish I had. I wish I could show it to you. 

When I was a senior in high school, thinking of what colleges to apply to, I asked one of my favorite teachers to write a recommendation for me. Her name was Cheryl Johnston. After a lackluster sophomore year, during which my grades had slipped, I’d deliberately taken her class, AP European History, with the intention of receiving top marks. In her mid-50s at that time, gray-haired, bespectacled, and often clad in a turtleneck, she had the hardest class in the entire school. And it was terrific. Intellectually challenging but also deeply rewarding. I received an A+ grade. And I had the joy of doing it beside Mike, sitting next to each other, partnering on projects, and studying for exams together. Though we went to the same elementary school, we grew much closer that junior year in high school. We were both literary-minded and shared similar tastes in cinema, sports, and music. I nicknamed him “Coleridge,” and he called me “Wordsworth,” after the 18th and 19th century British Romantic-era poets we both admired.

I only ended up applying to one school senior year, Williams College. I didn’t know what Ms. Johnston wrote in my recommendation because she submitted it sealed without my reading it. Four years later, when I was about to graduate from Williams in 2007, I swung by the Dean’s Office, which I heard let students review their full admissions applications, including letters of recommendation. I opened the letter to learn that Ms. Johnston had written her recommendation for me about my relationship with Mike junior year in high school. It was incredibly sweet and kind and unexpected. She wrote about how I’d helped him come out of his shell and his shyness, something Mike himself wrote to me in an essay. He talked about how, because of his weight, he had internalized negative, superficial views other people had of him and shut himself off from them. I’ve always thought that identity is not behavior, and didn't judge him positively or negatively because of what he looked like or how he or other people identified him, but because of how he behaved. I encouraged him to not pity himself but develop his personality and behave in a way where they couldn’t help but look past their biases. He took to this, and blossomed that senior year and beyond.

With hindsight, I really appreciated Ms. Johnston’s letter of recommendation. After Mike passed away in 2010, I appreciated it more. And after Ms. Johnston passed away in 2021, even more so. Mike would have turned 40 years old today, so I wanted to read the letter and share it, a testament to a time in my life when someone observed our friendship and documented it unbeknownst to either of us. I was sure I’d made a copy of the letter that day in 2007 in the Williams Dean’s Office. But after all these years, I couldn't find it. I’ve searched for it on and off since then. This week alone, I spent maybe 12 hours combing through every paper in my files at home and in my storage to no avail. I called up the college, to see if they could share it with me, only to learn that seven years after a student graduates, they destroy all files related to that student’s time on campus outside of their transcript. Oof. Undaunted, I bought an external floppy disk reader off the Internet to see if perhaps I’d digitally kept it. (Yes, I was still using floppy disks in 2007.) This week, I even bought a Windows laptop PC to read those 20-something-year-old floppy disks. Still no luck.

I wish I could show it to you. But I also know that I’m grateful this week for the adventure I went on with Mike. In trying to find that one piece of paper, I had to sift through boxes and boxes and boxes filled with decades of files, cards, and notes I don’t often visit. It didn’t leave me longing for the past or filled with regret, as much as it made me excited for the present and the agency and life I have today. I wish Mike were still here to live it with us. But I also know that he is with us in the way that matters. And this week, we had another adventure. Happy birthday, big guy. We love you.

June 11, 2024

In my family's photo album, two photos in particular come to mind today. They're from 1988, on the first day of preschool for my older brother George and me. It was just a couple of weeks after we had moved out of Kenya to begin our American adventure. George, four years old and brimming with confidence, sits proudly on his tricycle, dressed in his favorite color, red. Even on day one, he looks like he belongs there more than anyone else. In contrast, I'm not yet three years old, and my shyness is abundant.

Thirty-six years later, as I reflect on what would be George's 40th birthday, these images remind me of the lessons I learned from him: independence, self-regard, and moral integrity. Before mental illness took him from us, George often embodied these traits in extraordinary ways. From him, I learned how to walk into a room and fight for what I believe in, even if no one else does. To honor him, I try to do something positive and socially courageous every year.

I want to share a story about one of those acts of courage from five years ago, in 2019. At the time, I had built a reputation for developing and presenting on a specialized business topic in innovation to Fortune 500 executives. My work took me to major cities around the world, presenting to companies like Procter & Gamble, PepsiCo, and Levi's. One day, one of the largest European banks -- Banco Santander -- came calling asking if I could give a presentation in-person to their executives. They wanted to fly me and some colleagues I had at the time to London, put me in a five-star hotel, and spend a day learning about this topic. I hesitated. Unbeknownst to the client or my colleagues, George had worked for this company in their Boston office. Unbeknownst to them, I hated this bank with all my heart.

When George worked at Santander, he was harassed by some of their staff members. True to his nature, George fought back. Human resources, as is typical of them, did nothing to help him, and made the situation worse, blaming him for having surfaced the issues. One can argue it accelerated the onset of the mental illness that eventually took his life. The idea of presenting to Santander gnawed at me.

I had a few options: (a) decline and give a blanket excuse, keeping my reasons to myself; (b) decline and tell them the truth in writing, which they might ignore; or (c) channel a bit of Preschool George Energy, act as though I belong in that room more than anyone else, and do something courageous. As Warren Buffett wisely says, "You can always tell someone 'go to hell' tomorrow.'" Yes, but sometimes, that day is today.

I discussed my dilemma with my family and received various opinions. My father's advice to "speak truth to power" resonated most. So, I chose option C. But even option C on the decision tree had many branches. I could simply tell them what I thought and walk out, but I realized it might have a more lasting impact if I first won them over.

I'll admit, I was somewhat nervous about how they would react to my story about George. But I realized it was right to find the courage to do so. After spending 90 minutes teaching a group of a dozen of their executives my innovation topic, I had won them over. Then, I laid them out.

I told them about George and that I hesitated to make this trip. I told them how he used to work there, the challenges he faced from colleagues, how the company failed him, and that it contributed to his death. I expressed my great animosity toward Santander and shared how I, my family, and many people I respect dislike their company. I told them that as an investor, I understand how efficiency, productivity, and data guide decisions. But as a human, empathy, kindness, and character matter more. The lesson from my brother's experience at their firm is that they need to do more to be empathetic and humanistic, not just with their clients, but also with their employees.

The room fell silent. One of my colleagues was surprised and a little awkward about it, which I anticipated and why I hadn't shared my plan. Afterward, four of the executives in the room from Santander approached me, thanked me for the message and authenticity, and said it was a stark reminder that people always matter more and they can do better. It didn't change my view of the firm—I still won't open an account with them or work with them—but I was deeply glad I spoke the truth.

Five years later, I'm doing better than I could have dreamed, both personally and financially. This act of courage didn't set me back one bit. It freed and propelled me to new heights. It reinforced something George showed me in the healthy stages of his life: the benefits of being independent-minded, respecting yourself and your moral boundaries, and fighting for what you believe in far outweigh social niceties. And if anyone tries to pay you to forget those, don't. Take the money and say to their faces, "Fuck you."

June 11, 2020

“All living is listening for a throat to open. The length of its silence shaping lives.” - Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric (2014)

Never before have tempest and tranquility coexisted so beautifully. Never before. In my life, perhaps never again.

What is the first thing you think of when you hear the name “George”? I think of my older brother George Z. Bakuli. Since he passed away six years ago, I think about him literally every single day. Every single day. I am blessed to have had him in my life. I am blessed to continue to have him in my thoughts. But the heartbreak lingers, especially with each passing year; the feeling grows of just how young he was when he died. Just 29 years old. Just beginning his life in so many ways.

When I think of George, I think of his social courage. His steady moral compass. His independence of mind. I think of his indomitable will. His loyalty to those he loved and who loved him. His pride in his Blackness, his ancestry, and his family. I think of his big smile; how he playfully lorded over me that, unlike me, he had a great smile without ever needing braces. How he encouraged me to stand up for myself and to never brook the opinion that I wasn’t capable. I think of how he knew, like I knew, that the odds were stacked against us; and how he encouraged me not to mind if pursuing my dreams or doing the right thing made other people feel uncomfortable about themselves, especially white people. I think of how every time after I achieved some big goal growing up, whether an A on an essay or victory in a school election, I would tell him, “Next time, y’all best bring kryptonite”. I think of how, many years later, just a few months before he passed, on New Year’s Eve, after midnight, he unexpectedly texted me, “Next time, y’all best bring kryptonite! That’s your saying. Don’t ever forget that!” I think of how grateful I was and am that he remembered and appreciated details from our lives. I think of his arena-sized laugh. I think of his beautiful energy and ambitions and hopes and dreams. I think of how those were cut short, at just 29 years old, because of mental illness. I think of how it was not his fault. I think of how he fought for his life and his dignity. I think of how the health care system failed him. I think of how his employers and human resources failed him. I think of how even six years after he died, too many people continue to use language that stigmatizes mental health, unaware or uninterested of words besides “crazy” or “insane” to describe something negative. I think about so very, very much.

Above all, though, when I think about George, I think about courage. I think about how before he got sick, his courage to live better was his greatest gift to me. I think about how courage is the real wellspring of any meaningful change in our lives, communities, and societies. Since he passed away, on his birthday, June 11th, I’ve tried to meditate on courage. I try to remind myself to live courageously. This year was no different. If anything, the reminders were heightened. Because when I think about “George,” I also think about George Floyd. Unlike my brother, I don’t know intimate details of Floyd’s life. He was a Black man too. He had energy and ambitions and dreams. He had people he loved and who loved him. He also died too soon. In many ways today he is a symbol. A symbol of so many Black lives unjustly ended. Whether at the protests I have joined or on social media, when I see all the glorious signs for him and Breonna Taylor and Eric Garner and Tamir Rice and too many Black lives lost trying to say they mattered, I can’t help but think of my brother George, whose life mattered so much to me.

I’ve read a lot of late from white strangers, friends, and acquaintances about what they are doing to help make change happen and to prove that Black lives matter. They seek a better criminal justice system. Some even go further; they understand we will not have a better criminal justice system without other forms of justice, whether social, medical, or, above all, economic justice.  This will take stamina, resolve, and courage. They are signaling they are ready to actively join a fight so many of us have been battling every single day of our lives. When I think about courage, though, I can’t help but think how unaware or uninterested so many of these strangers, friends, and acquaintances seem to be to opportunities to be courageous in their daily lives. It seems so much easier for people to stand in solidarity with people they have never met, and will never meet, than people in their own lives and communities. Black people in their own lives and communities. I don’t have a lot of answers for how to improve criminal justice. But I have some thoughts around how to improve economic justice. Here are a few: 

Hire and retain Black people. Promote Black people. Fund Black people. Become a customer of a variety of Black businesses. Compensate Black people justly. Don’t steal Black people’s ideas and efforts and then erase their contributions. Don’t make excuses for, give special treatment to, or put on a pedestal non-Black people if you wouldn’t do likewise for Black people. Don’t penalize Black people for things you wouldn’t penalize others for. Don’t label Black people “angry” or “agitators” when they display the courage to specify their experiences as relates to being Black. Don’t gaslight Black people when they hold you accountable for your words, policies, and actions.

These aren’t hypotheticals. These are tangible choices in response to events I’ve both experienced and witnessed firsthand.

One thing in particular is critical: It’s not giving implicit special treatment to white people. I’ve seen over and over again white people say they are “acknowledging [their] privilege” and “learning to use [their] privilege well”. On the wide spectrum of say John Brown to Jefferson Davis, it is a gesture on the progressive side of things. But it is hardly enough. It just perpetuates in new ways the problems that got us here in the first place. I can’t help but think, “There’s no universal law that you should have privilege in the first place. How about a world in which white privilege doesn’t exist?” That seems to me a truly courageous idea and series of actions worth publicly speaking up about and fighting for. As a Black woman I work with said so well, “Rationalizing or compartmentalizing racism because it preserves privilege is a form of racism.” Rather than recognizing how good you have it undeservedly, and benevolently using that goodness for the benefit of Black people, how about a world in which you don’t undeservedly have it so good? Wouldn’t that be truly courageous?

Zen in the Art of Friendship

“Yell. Jump. Play. Out-run those sons-of-bitches. They’ll never live the way you live. Go do it.” - Ray Bradbury (1994)

In January 2017, I bought a remarkable collection of essays by the legendary writer Ray Bradbury at The American Book Center in Amsterdam. It was titled Zen in the Art of Writing (1994). The quote above comes from the preface. Bradbury tells of how in October 1929, when he was in the fourth grade, he was teased by some of his classmates for liking the comic books of Buck Rogers. Peer pressured and wanting to fit in, he tore his comics apart, tears streaming down his face. A month later he realized his mistake. It wasn’t his comics he should’ve torn up, it was friendships that didn’t value him or his enthusiasms. He went back to his comics. Later Bradbury writes: “Who are your friends? Do they believe in you? Or do they stunt your growth with ridicule and disbelief? If the latter, you haven’t friends. Go find some.” Thank god the young Bradbury found that courage to believe in himself. If not, we wouldn’t have had Fahrenheit 451 (1953), The Illustrated Man (1951), and other classics of American fiction.

When I read Zen in the Art of Writing, I thought a lot about my good friend Mike McCoy. He and Bradbury had the same curiosity, courage, and fighting spirit, not just in themselves but in others. It’s the Ides of March, and Mike would be 34 years old today. I think everyone if they’re lucky in life has a friend like Mike and is a friend to themselves like Bradbury was to himself. Mike was one of the most curious, kind, witty, morally courageous, and intellectually hardworking people I have ever met. It was Mike who encouraged my enthusiasms and said it was okay to try to be the best version of myself; who said it was perfectly fine to talk about Nas and William Wordsworth in the same sentence; to enjoy music, sports, movies, and poetry as much as science, business, politics, and history; to see connections between all where many saw none. So I look forward to his birthday. To toast and celebrate him with beer and barbecue and to remind myself to live with his Bradbarian inspiration: To yell, jump, play, and out-run those sons-of-bitches.

Language Lessons

“All living is listening for a throat to open. The length of its silence shaping lives.” - Claudia Rankine

Five days after my older brother George passed away in spring 2014, my dad and I drove to New York from our family home in Massachusetts to collect George’s belongings from his apartment. It was not my first time in his apartment but it was my first time looking through his personal stuff since maybe we were kids. I noticed something surprising. I noticed how organized he was. His suits and dress shirts on the same type of hangars, all in the same direction. His other clothes folded neatly and put away tightly in drawers. In his many books, the notes he wrote on the margins of the pages were so clean and so legible. And then I realized something. I was only surprised to see this because society had lied to me. And it lied to you. And it continues to lie to us. And that lie matters. We are often told to believe that someone who is mentally ill is someone who appears in shambles and by appearances “Doesn’t have their life together”. Yet here was the opposite.

There is an invisible tapestry we all have a role in sowing that describes what mental illness looks like. You see it in jokes that make light of mental illness or death by suicide, or the way in which almost everyone uses words like “crazy”, “batshit”, or “insane” to describe a negative person or situation. We think we’re being colorful. We think we’re describing something accurately. I’ve seen my smartest friends and acquaintances do it. I too have done it. But all it does is quietly but firmly make someone who questions how they’re feeling, feel like they can’t talk about it, like they can’t seek help. We think nothing of it, but all the while sow another thread into that invisible tapestry. And if you haven’t been paying attention, you should because that tapestry might be invisible but it is not light. And it doesn’t discriminate. It can weigh as heavy as a sheet of steel, and it doesn’t care what your gender, race, or age is. That you’re a beloved chef, a loving and loyal brother, a devoted mother and fashion icon, or a favorite boss. It doesn’t care how much money you have, how good you look, or how easily you cross international borders. Yet we add to it when we fail to consider what we do to make it stronger and continue to stigmatize mental health.

I love George and think about him every single day; I am eternally thankful for him and for the positive influence he continues to have in my life. He taught me to love myself without reservations. He taught me to speak up, to apologize, to laugh, and to heal. And he taught me to fight for my life, tooth and nail if I had to—which he did too, first by seeking therapy. He would be 34 years old today. Every ounce of me wishes he were still alive. And I know had he not fallen into the altered state of mind that sadly took him from us, he would too.