Eulogy
Susan Mary Haddleton, formerly Susan Mary Strother, nee Susan Mary Kershaw, also lived, for a brief spell in Montreal, under the alias of Suzanne Dion, and was, for the first months of precious life, known as Kimberley — yes, it’s true. Sue was Kimberly Mary Kershaw until her parents found out that the neighbor’s cat was also called Kimberley, and so, to avoid such undignifed associations, she was rechristened as Susan.
And already here, before we’ve even begun to tell her story, this assortment of names affords us a glimpse of a rich and varied life — a life full of different adventures, associations, and aspirations.
In today’s eulogy, I hope to give you a taste of that richness. It is conventional in this setting to offer a straight chronology. The highlight reel, if you will. And there is much to be said for this approach, but I do not think it will serve to capture the life of Susie. For what is most remarkable about my mother’s biography is not the single-minded drive with which she pursued her story, but rather the resourcefulness and range of talents she brought to a life full of twists and turns.
And so: instead of getting Sue’s biography in linear order, I am going to hold the jewel of her multi-faceted personality up before your eyes and spin it slowly around, presenting you with five different sides of Sue, five different selves, each one revealing a fresh aspect of her radiant character.
My mother managed to live many lives in the one life she was given. She was large; she contained multitudes.
***
We begin with Sue the Aesthete, the lover of art and beauty.
Sue’s aesthetic sensibility first revealed itself at a very young age. As family legend has it, on her first day of kindergarten, she refused to wear the outfit her mother picked out for her and assembled her own. That was the last day of her life that anyone dared try to dress her. From thence forth she was in charge of her wardrobe, deriving not just great pride, but great joy from the performance of everyday life.
But to say my mother was interested in clothes is somehow to miss the mark. First of all, because a fixation on fashion and a penchant for power shopping can be all too easily confused for vanity and base materialism. In my mother’s hands, clothes were no simple vehicle for her self-regard. She used clothing as an artistic medium. Her body was the canvas, her rainbow-colored closet, her painter’s palette.
To stand in that closet was to be confronted with a kaleidoscope of tints tones and tinges. Color to my mother was a language unto itself, and one she related to at a very deep, I’d even say existential level. She used color to express herself, to channel energies, to redirect moods. If she was feeling down, she’d throw on a blazing yellow dress to brighten up her day; in a more contemplative mood, you might see her donning a deep, pensive green. And if she ever wore red to the office it could mean only one thing: somebody was getting fired.
Her memory for outfits was astonishing - in fact, it was photographic. Name an important event in her life, a birthday, a party, an interview, and she could tell you, down to the minutest detail exactly what she’d worn and where she’d got it. This skill went right back to the earliest days of her life - just a few weeks ago she was recounting to me the precise texture and hue of the dress she wore to her 5th birthday party.
When Sue was in her early 30’s, during a transitionary period between careers, she refashioned herself as an image consultant, selling her services to corporate clients. She would be sent a schlumpy sales rep or a frumpy Finance Manager, someone up for promotion but not thought to be “presentable” at higher-level meetings. She would then take this person under her wing and “do their colors,” as she liked to say, before whisking them off on an afternoon shopping spree. While I never attended any of these outings myself, I know exactly what it is like to go shopping with my mother. Before you’ve even gotten your bearings, you find yourself thrust into the dressing room, her hand passing outfits through the curtain. Minutes later, you step out in front of the mirror wearing something you’d never have thought to try on. And you feel transformed.
My mother was full of stories of like this. Middle aged men and women who had long ago given up on themselves, reduced to tears upon looking in the mirror and seeing what she had wrought. Even more moving, and much less known, was Sue’s pro-bono work in hospitals, where she image consulted for cancer patients and others who were struggling to feel good about their appearance after losing weight or a head of hair.
I think this chapter of my mother’s life reveals something important about her love of beauty: that it was not selfish. It was, I dare say, democratic. She insisted on the power and necessity of beauty in daily life, and led by example. Her way of dressing gave pleasure and joy to others; it elevated the stakes in a way that could infuse a simple meal with a sense of occasion. Even at home, before joining her at the table for dinner, we would all change into our absolute finest because we knew she would be bringing her A-game.
Today, looking out at this colorful crowd, I see her legacy at work and alive. I see energy, I see zest, and I feel her spirit. In your collective beauty, I see my mother’s face.
***
If clothes were the constant, it was music that was the calling.
At the tender age of 11 Sue auditioned for and was accepted to the choir at Belmont Intermediate. This talented group of youngsters so enjoyed themselves that upon graduating from school, they decided to keep the choir going, and thus, the Belmont Singers were born. Before long, my mother had landed her first solo role in a show called The Emperor’s Nightingale. Her performance caught the eye of the choir director who invited her to take private lessons. It also caught the eye of a pubescent little baritone with lovely long eyelashes named Stephen Strother. Whether my mother reciprocated his longing looks at this stage is unclear. She had many suitors.
A couple of years later Sue was sent to train with Dame Sister Mary Leo, who was then known for grooming some of the world’s finest sopranos for the international stage, including Dame Kiri Te Kanawa. As my mother’s voice matured, her talent seemed boundless. First of all was the raw ability. Later in life, a throat doctor, upon examining her vocal cords, said: “Madame, you have a Ferrari down there.” That Ferrari gave my mother a four-octave range and the ability to take on some of the most challenging and iconic songs in the Bel Canto tradition. This led to lead roles in operas by Rossini, Strauss, Mozart and Gilbert and Sullivan, a solo in front of the Queen of England during her state visit to New Zealand, and many TV and radio appearances, including broadcasts with National Radio. Capping it all off, she began her twenties with a 4-week, 10-city tour of the USA with the New Zealand Orchestra.
***
Studying opera put Sue in touch with the languages of Europe, and she found she had a flair for them. At school she began to study French and Latin, adding German in her Senior year. She topped the class in all three. After graduating, she continued these studies at Teacher’s Training College before landing her first job teaching French and Latin at Takapuna Grammar.
Clearly, Sue had a talent for languages. But no account of her life would be complete without mentioning her special kinship with la langue Francais. In her more whimsical moods, she speculated she’d been a Parisian chanteuse in a past life. And no doubt that her timeless sense of style, effortless sophistication, and elegant manners all hinted that hers was a French soul trapped in a Kiwi’s body. At the other end of life, whilst in semi-retirement, she and Guy would escape the New Zealand winters to summer in the hills near St. Tropez every year, where she would slip effortlessly back into fluency. My mother was a cosmopolitan woman, at home in many places, but it is safe to say that she never felt more at home than when she was back in France.
***
I have spoken of Sue’s love of fashion, of opera, of languages. But I could easily widen the circle to include architecture, ceramics, paintings, jewelry, flowers, and classical music. She cherished beauty in all its many forms. Each fresh expression a new chance to delight in the world, in the pure pleasure of being alive. Of course, it is not lost on anyone here that Sue was not just a lover of beauty, but incredibly beautiful herself. This beauty shone forth from an inner radiance. It reflected the soul within.
***
Surveying the first two decades or so of Sue’s life, everywhere we look, we find an interest in the arts, in expression, in the creative side of life. Nothing in those early years would have suggested that Sue was going to go on to become an extraordinarily successful entrepreneur, but that is indeed what happened. To describe this evolution, we must pivot from Sue the Aesthete to Sue the Pioneer. After a year of teaching at Takapuna Grammar, my mother received a scholarship to go study at the London School of Opera. Meanwhile, her partner Stephen also had a scholarship to get his Masters in medical physics at McGill University in Montreal. Sue made the difficult choice to postpone further training and join her husband in Canada.
All of a sudden, she was in a foreign land, living on her student husband’s salary, with no connections and no means to continue her operatic career. This is when she began to show her true mettle. After working a few odd jobs, she talked her way into an entry level position at Drake International, a recruitment agency specializing in all areas of Permanent and Flexible employment. This was a moment when jobs for foreigners were extremely hard to come by. The reason being that since 1974, a few short years before Sue’s arrival, French had been declared the only official language in the province. To enforce this policy, Montreal had a language police who would conduct periodic raids on businesses and organizations to ensure that French and only French was spoken. The story goes that Sue was working at the agency when an alarm went off - the language police were on their way. Someone handed her a phone book and told her to chose an alias. She put her finger down on a random page and then and there became Suzanne Dion. Mademoiselle Dion spent her days making cold calls in French, pitching a roster of employees to different organizations. This was her apprenticeship in the art of Sales: and I speak from experience when I say that picking up the phone to try and sell something to someone who is trying to get on with their day is a very difficult and often demoralizing job. But, to nobody’s surprise here, Sue was very good at it. She had the requisite grit, the refusal to be daunted by rejection, but more importantly she had an incredible emotional intelligence, an intuition about people that consistently unlocked their defenses. My mother never forced herself on others. Hers was an understated charisma, a quiet magnetism that people of all kinds gravitated towards. She was constantly being told secrets. No doubt she was the guardian of more than a few of the forbidden thoughts held by the people gathered here today.
There was just something about Sue. Something that people trusted. Something that people liked. And so it was not long before she was making her sales quotas. A short while later, the job of branch manager came up at the office. Nobody was considering Sue, a lowly entry-level employee and just 23 years old. Nobody, that is, except for Sue herself. She put her name forwards, making a forceful case to the boss. They demurred. She insisted. And so she was sent off to Ottawa for personality tests and interviews at headquarters. The execs were impressed enough to take a chance. Her colleagues were all older than her and none too happy about this young whipper snapper taking hold of the reigns. They began to act up, ignoring her directives and slacking off. In response, little Suzanne Dion marched into work one morning and told each employee that they had a choice: buck up and listen to her or leave, now. She pointed to the door. She pointed to the phones. Everyone stayed. From there, Sue rapidly ascended from branch manager to area to regional manager of Eastern Canada, and finally, manager of 12 branches up and down the Eastern Seaboard of the USA.
There was no doubting it: Sue had a talent for business.
***
About the time Sue was turning 30 life took another couple of unexpected turns. First, her husband Stephen received his PhD and got a new Post-Doc position in New York City. Second, she became pregnant with yours truly. These two events combined to produce a major upheaval in Sue’s life: a change of country and a change of roles. She moved to New York, left Drake, gave brith to me, and returned to her first love: Opera. New York City was the center of the International Opera Scene. Standing-room only tickets at the renowned MET opera house were cheap, and she often went to see the stars. She found a new singing teacher, Braeden, who began to rehabilitate her voice, and a new best friend, Rae Ramsey, who was also pursuing a career on the stage. She was just beginning to build a little momentum behind her career when fate knocked again. This time, my father was hired as a professor at the University of Minnesota. To translate this move into New Zealand terms, imagine being told by your partner it was time to move from Auckland to Invercargill. Much colder, much smaller, away from it all.
Nor was Minnesota exactly renowned for its Opera scene. But my dad’s job was a good one, and so they packed their bags and were off again. Against all odds, Sue decided to double down on her opera career. She set her sights on the International Bel Canto Singing Competition, the annual winner of which receives a scholarship and a 6-week engagement at La Scala Opera House in Italy. Armed with a piano and a fierce sense of determination, Sue trained relentlessly from home while raising her toddler, supplementing her practice with regular visits to her teacher in New York. After months of disciplined work, she submitted her demo tape and waited. When the news came in, she found out she was the runner-up, number two out of thousands. When I finish speaking, we will have the pleasure of hearing this tape during the photo and reflection time.
It is tempting to say this was a fork in the road in which life could have gone left or right. What if she had won? Would she have finally have been on her way to becoming the international opera star she dreamed of being as a younger woman? I think this is too simple. For she was also a new mother, and beginning to wonder whether a jet-setting life of engagements in foreign cities was going to allow her to be as present as she wished to be. She wanted to give her son a good life and she wanted to be a part of it. At the same time, she wanted to find her own reasons for getting up in the morning. Those reasons would soon materialize in the form of a transatlantic phone call.
***
When my mother was younger, she had a sweetheart for one summer. His name was Guy Haddleton. He had long blonde curls, chain-smoked, and generally cultivated a rebellious bad boy persona. She and Guy played tennis together, went sailing, and had great fun before he was, in his words, “fired,” and returned to boarding school. Guy faded from the scene, and that was that.
A decade or so later, Guy was walking into Harrod’s department store in London, at the exact the same moment, Sue’s parents, Rosslyn and Peter, were on their way out. Guy! Rossie exclaimed. He smiled. Sue’s contact details were passed along and a couple days later Guy picked up the phone. My mother always said that despite over a decade of silence, she recognized his voice instantly. Sue and Guy began to talk. At this point he was forging a business career of his own in Bristol, England, with thoughts of quitting his job to become an entrepreneur, but not exactly sure how to go about it. For her part, Sue was image consulting and beginning to contemplate leaving Opera behind, looking for the next move.
Guy had an idea for a software package which would allow businesses to improve their financial planning. He would call Sue to strategize, and gradually, the notion emerged that they might start a business together. The only problem was that they didn’t have any money. Nor did they actually have a product. But, in their eyes, these were not good reasons to postpone any longer. Guy and Sue scrounged up 49 pounds and placed a classified ad in the Financial Times - that is, an ad for a product that did not yet exist. They got 39 orders right off the bat and found themselves having to develop something overnight without any funds. They had foolishly advertised a color-coded manual, but couldn’t even afford to print in color, so they manually highlighted each page with pink and green pens to live up to their promise.
With the prospect of a real business on their hands, my mom began to make the 8000 mile round trip commute from Minneapolis to Bristol and back on a regular basis. No doubt it was not an easy decision for a working, married mother to do this, but she was determined to succeed. At the very beginning, Guy worked from one room of a flat in Bristol, Sue from the other, marketing the company as a massive brand complete with regular front-page adverts in major newspapers. Nobody knew how small they actually were. Two years later, the fiction was true. They had an office and 10,000 customers.
Fast forward another decade, and they’d relocated operations to America, developed a worldwide partner network, and had an offer on the table to sell the company for 100 million pounds, which they accepted. The Daily Mail, characteristically, ran a headline titled “Penniless Pals make Millions.”
A few years after Adaytum came Anaplan. It was, in many ways, a kind of Adaytum 2, animated by the same ideas but now powered by better technology, and the talented they’d groomed over more than a decade together in the Software business. And so, it was rinse and repeat. Anaplan was officially co-founded by Guy, Sue, and the old technologist from Adaytum, Michael Gould, in 2006. Roughly a decade later, the company went public on the New York stock exchange.
There are many, many incredible stories from that 30 year business adventure. But they are for another day. What I want to highlight here is my mother’s role in building both companies from the ground up. She was not just the co-founder and head of sales and marketing, she was the other half of a true partnership with Guy: one in which every crucial decision, every hire, every change in strategy was hotly debated and decided upon together. The true extent of this partnership has not always been recognized over the years, as my mother was the first to know. As is so common in business, the default assumption is that the woman plays a secondary, supplemental role. Many women, when facing this kind of sexism, try to downplay their feminine side to appear more authoritative. But I’m incredibly proud to say my mother refused to make this compromise. She would be the woman she wanted to be, as glamorous as she damn well liked, and a business powerhouse too. She would succeed on her terms.
When thinking of the full arc of this varied and colorful career, a few words from the American Poet Carl Phillips come to mind:
“What if, between this one and the one we hoped for, there’s a third life, taking its own slow, dreamlike hold, even now — blooming, in spite of us.”
Several times throughout the course of my mother’s life, a third existence bloomed up in the space between what she was living and what she thought she’d be living. That was she able to embrace these moments and own them, to re-invent herself time and again according to circumstance, when it would have been so easy to despair or grow bitter, this is what makes her, to my mind, a Pioneer.
***
Pioneers are not often thought of as loving caring beings. In a dog eat dog world, so the common wisdom goes, compassion will get you no where. But compassion was my mother’s creed. She was an incredible boss, a mentor to countless individuals throughout the different organizations she worked for. She was an adoring wife who supported her two husbands in their pursuits selflessly. She was an extraordinary mother, who gave the gift of unconditional love and unqualified confidence to a son who flourished under her influence. She was a true friend to an astonishing array of individuals. She was a great philanthropist, who supported through her charitable work with Guy, thousands of individuals - with a special focus on the development of youth.
Never did I hear my mother speak ill of others, in front of or behind their backs. She had a purity about her, an innocence even, but this should not be confused with naïveté. She was wise in the ways of the world.
My mother had a phrase we used to say to each other when I was little, and indeed continued to use in later years. “I love you to infinity and beyond.” Thinking about my mother’s love and the ways it worked in my life, I’ve come to believe this was not just a nice turn of phrase, a piece of poetry. My mother loved in a way that made you feel it was boundless and beyond critique. And I am not only one here who can say that I blossomed under that incredible beam.
***
How could so much love fit into a single life? My mother did not believe there was a fixed amount of love to go around. One of her favorite words was abundance, and she sincerely believed that the more love there was in the world, the better. Her ability to draw on this deep reserve love, a cosmic source that transcended the dimensions of her little heart, is also what made her, through and through, an optimist. The way my mother saw the world, the cup was never just half full; for her, it was always brimming over. When people think of Sue this is what first comes to mind: the joyful nature, the bubbling energy, the infectious laugh. Some of my favorite memories of mornings at the Haddleton Household, when I was home for Christmas, involve me waking up to great peals of laughter breaking out in the kitchen and floating up the stairway, filling the house with happiness.
My mother’s warmth and optimism drew people to her, and it ran deep. But I’d like to emphasize that for my mom, positivity was not simply a personality trait, it was a practice. Something to be cultivated, and something she did cultivate with herself and with those closest to her. She was not immune to negative thoughts or sadness, but she devoted herself to practices that focused the mind on the good in life - and my god, how much good there was.
She was able to do the same for those she loved. Many of us here know the feeling of coming to Sue with a problem or difficulty and leaving with a fresh perspective, feeling hopeful, renewed.
In my mother’s final weeks, to my amazement, this positivity did not fall away. If anything, it increased. Though she had plenty of reasons to complain, when we asked her how she was doing, invariably, a smile would spread across her face and we would hear a resounding “Great!” She not only met the moment with extraordinary dignity and courage, but with joy. She had spent her life contemplating the great mysteries: the cosmic beauty of our sudden appearance whence we know not, the dance of our entangled lives, and our eventual homecoming to the source, and she was not afraid.
***
There is a story about the first philosopher in the Western Tradition, a man known as Thales, one of the Pre-Socratics. It is said that he was scorned by others for pursuing his useless philosophy instead of business. And so, to prove to others that making money was of little consequence, he studied the stars and determined that there would be a bumper crop of olives that year. He then took out leases on all the olive presses in town, and when the huge harvest came, rented them out to others. In this way, he made a great fortune, and went back to his philosophizing.
This is, in its way, a story about my mother. For all of her entrepreneurial success, for all of her business acumen, for all of those years spent growing and investing in companies, she never saw those material pursuits as the be all end all of her existence. Business was a means to an end, a way to put her talents to use, stay out of trouble, and give a good life to her family. But my mother’s more abiding concerns had to do with the spirit - what she called her “higher self.” She was a seeker in the deepest, most spiritual sense of the term. And in her private life, that seeking took her on a journey through many different traditions and practices from Qi Gong to Reiki, from Christianity to Hinduism.
The most decisive influence came when Sue was in her early 30’s. Around this time she had what she called a spiritual awakening in large part driven by the discovery of the writings of Paramahansa Yogananda - first, through his famous book Autobiography of a Yogi, followed by The Divine Romance and Man’s Eternal Quest. She read the latter so often that I found it in her library torn into two pieces. Inside the book, I also found pages with dog-ears and underlines. These were the thoughts that most resonated. When taken together, we can discern the outlines of her belief system.
What was that system? First and foremost, the belief that God is a synonym for the divine: divine consciousness, divine joy, divine existence. This divine source transcends the particulars of any religion. It is the same substance that animates the God of Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, of anyone seeking spiritual fulfillment. To quote Mahatma Ghandi, another figure much admired by my mother: “the soul of religions is one, but it is encased in a multitude of forms. Wise men will ignore the outward crust and see the same soul living under a variety of crusts.”
When Sue said that there were many paths to God she was glimpsing the soul of all religions. The particular representation of God and the particular practices of each faith were not of great importance. What mattered to her was the deeper idea of the divine as an ever-flowing source of love and joy in the world.
Sue did not see the essence of this divine as something separate from us - it was not up in heaven or residing in the great beyond. It was here, all around us and in us. I’m sure she would have approved of something the French poet Paul Eluard once said: “There is another world, but it is in this one.” This other world exists alongside the physical plane, separate from the stuff of life but permeating it entirely. In a passage Sue took the time to carefully underline, Yogananda describes how we humans also belong to this cosmology. I believe she saw herself this way and would like us to try and do the same today:
“The real you is invisible. You are only dreaming that you have a body of flesh. To live only in the consciousness of this visible body of flesh is spiritually limiting, for the body is subject to the sufferings of disease, injury, poverty, hunger, and death. Your real self is light and consciousness. If you cultivate superconsciousness — awareness of your real self, the soul — you will realize that the body is simply a projection of the invisible self within. The invisible self within us cannot be hurt our killed. That invisible self is made in the image of God, free as the Spirit is free.”
For Yogananda, as for my mother, the way to realize the invisible self that lives beyond our physical bodies was through silent meditation. Day after day, she followed in the footsteps of the great masters, closing her eyes in her morning Qi Gong practice to meditate. According to Yogananda, those who pursue this practice faithfully are filled with divine love and joy. And who can doubt it, having known my mother? At the deepest level of her being, in the place where the aesthete, the pioneer, the optimist, and the carer all converge, we find a seeking soul full of divine love and joy. To know her was to know this, to feel embraced by her warm, accepting gaze.
During the upcoming reflection time, to honor my mother’s memory, and to help ease the transition we are making from knowing her in the physical world to knowing her in our hearts, I would like to propose that you join me in meditating upon Sue’s invisible self - the real self, the soul. When the great meditation teacher, Thich Nat Hahn, was in the last days of his life, he said to his followers, when I pass you will want to put up a shrine to honor my memory. Please do not do this. But if you must, I want you to include a sign that says, I am not here. And if you put up that sign, please put up a second sign that says “I am not out there either.” And if you put up that sign, please put up a third sign that says, “If I am anywhere it is in your every step and every breath.” If Sue — the real Sue — is anywhere, it is not in there, or out here - it is in our every step and breath, in the love and joy she brought into our life, and the very real ways that her spirit will continue to inspire and shape our lives forever after.