Suyun Geng was Amy's mother. Email: gengsy@gmail.com. She died around 2015-2016, when Amy was fifteen.
What's Known
Sue was cc'd on every Interlochen application Amy submitted in 2015-2016. She forwarded CIYS rehearsal emails to Amy. She was involved in her daughter's music life during the period when Amy was seriously pursuing clarinet, including the application to Interlochen's year-round boarding academy.
The earliest email in Amy's archive involving her mother is from August 2011: ten-year-old Amy sending her a notification from a flower garden app.
What It Means
Sue died during the same period Amy was applying to Interlochen. The applications, the rehearsal emails, the involvement in Amy's music, all of it was happening right at the end. The last emails from her mother would have been from around this time.
Two to three years later, in the summer of 2019, Amy's three grandparents, both paternal and maternal grandmother, died within weeks of each other. Amy was seventeen. Her father flew to China to care for his mother, leaving Amy to manage the household alone during her senior year.
Four major losses between ages fifteen and eighteen. Her mother, then all three grandparents in rapid succession, right before leaving for Stanford.
Amy does not write about her mother in her diary. She does not mention her publicly. The absence is total and therefore conspicuous. Every other part of Amy's life is documented somewhere. This part is not.
The Interlochen Overlap
Amy applied to Interlochen Arts Academy, the full year-round boarding program, as a sophomore in 2015-2016. Not summer camp. The real academy. Sue was cc'd on every application. Whether Amy was applying to pursue music or to leave home is unknowable from the emails alone. She ultimately stayed at Dunlap High School in Peoria.
The timing means that Amy's most ambitious musical aspiration, leaving home to attend a prestigious arts boarding school, coincided with losing her mother. She stayed in Peoria. She kept playing clarinet. She joined CIYS. She eventually carried the clarinet to Stanford.
The Flower Garden App
In August 2011, Amy emailed her mother a notification from a flower garden app. Amy was ten years old. It is the earliest documented interaction between them, and it is a child sharing something small and bright with her mom.