This loss is unthinkable. However, as I process this new reality I’m finding something poignant living alongside my grief. It is an immense gratitude for all that Marco was and that by some miracle, if just for a while, we existed together in time and space. His influence on me is ineffable, but there is one memory that rises to the surface. When he was teaching me to climb and I was paralyzed by fear, he would often call out gentle reminders to look up at the expansive view.  This perspective pervaded his way of being in the world and will continue to shape mine.

I took care of my grandparents for the final two years of their lives, and Marco brought light, humor, and vibrancy into this challenging time. Besides providing distractions in the form of philosophical debates and outdoor adventures, he was one of the only people in my life who seemed completely comfortable discussing topics that made others cringe. He listened with curiosity and compassion instead of discomfort and pity as I described the realities of end of life care for someone with advanced dementia. Earlier this year, when my grandmother was being discharged from the hospital, despite being very busy and sleep deprived, Marco came over and helped me rearrange furniture and beds in our home so that everyone could be together and comfortable during her last days. He brought chocolate pudding because I once told him that it was her favorite. In the days that followed, which were some of the hardest of my life, I received pictures of newly emerging flowers pushing their way up through snow and all the tiny first signs of spring he could find. This simple but meaningful gesture gave me strength, shifting my gaze up, a comforting reminder of resilience and rebirth.

One of the things I loved most about our friendship was the way we fed off of each other’s compulsion to answer whatever questions arose in the moment. Even if it made us very late. I recall spending an hour trying to figure out which species of bark beetle had created artistic engravings on a piece of wood, and barely making it past the first stretch of the New York Botanical Garden because of his insistence that we identify every single tree. On more than one occasion, we set up ridiculous and totally unscientific experiments to test the intelligence of my cats. The results proved conclusively that they were far stupider than we had hoped. Whatever we set out to discover, it never seemed to matter how silly it was or how long it took.

He had a luminous, extraordinary mind, driven by an urge to understand and share rather than by ego. He was infinitely patient and thoughtful as I tried to poke holes in whatever philosophical claim he was fixated on at the time, encouraging my input no matter how inarticulate or illogical I felt it I was being. Marco brought out the parts of me of which I’m most proud, and embraced and emboldened an intellectual curiosity and excitement that I hadn’t felt in many years. I once spoke with him about a feature I discovered on the Merriam Webster website where you could see what year a word was first used. We had a lengthy conversation about how cool it would be to build an interactive application with a visual representation of the age of each word in a passage of text. That night, I was surprised and delighted to learn that he had quickly coded a functional prototype. He was always kindling sparks of interest, illuminating unexplored areas with enthusiasm.

His passion for nature, beauty and knowledge was infectious. We talked for hours about everything from to phylogenetic trees to what it means to love. We wandered through forests identifying edible mushrooms and plants and cooked up elaborate meals with whatever we found, at the end of which he would always exclaim “What a treat!”. When I was excited about photographing a meteor shower, he researched where the skies would be darkest and drove us out to a reservoir deep in the Catskills. We woke up at 2 am in the freezing cold, shivering but smiling, and gazed out at the shimmering stars and fleeting streaks of light, their reflections dancing in the water. I can’t think of a time in my life I’ve felt more alive.

Marco inspired me to do and feel things I didn’t know I was capable of, and to push past physical and emotional limits I never thought I would overcome. While the depth of my sadness mirrors the depth of my love, I will never for a moment regret opening my heart to him. I know that this loss will transform everyone who had a connection with him. For me, it will be the inspiration to enjoy every breath of fresh air and step through the forest, to be the kindest person I can be, to love this life and the people around me fully and with abandon. And in moments like these, when it feels impossible, to remember to look up.