I miss Josh so tremendously already

I miss Josh so tremendously already. I am still angry that this should happen when he was just so happy with everything in his life. Had I been a better person I should just be appreciative of the luck it was that we ran into each other a bit over a decade ago.

Josh and Valerie

Because what luck was it that I as a philosophy student started taking neuroscience classes. Insane luck that I got a rare professor that not even liked my never ending line of outrageous questions, but who was so nonhierarchical and honestly curious that he decided we should make a topic list and start our very own two person philosophical neuroscience reading group. The meetings were awesome vexed and wonderful – but we started to spend more and more time also talking about things that were definitely not on our preplanned shopping list of mind mysteries to unravel.

We became very good friends. I stopped being embarrased when he asked questions about ingredients and preparation procedures for menu items that he did not want – sending know-nothing waiters on relay races to the back kitchen. The reading group meetings slowly dwindled to the occasional as the dinner parties, BAM visits and Brewster adventures took the center stage. I am at this point not really able to understand that it is all a time gone.

I don't know if it was Jonathans or Ofer's kids that before a party up in Brewster once asked "why can't Josh just make the food before we come like everybody else" - the answer of course is that Josh was not everybody else. He always loved the shared process more than the personal accomplishment or end result (- though these typically in Josh’s Labs were award worthy and very tasty). The journey of open-ended exploration, play and curiosity was rather serious business to Josh – something that in it self was a standard to live up to. I think Josh understood not only the living but life better than most.

Everything is temporary and in flux – it is the joys that we have on the road that counts. Most changes are effected without big splashes. And Josh lived such a rich life that intersected so many countless other lives – that the good news is that he will live on in all of us and all those that he touched who do not even know it.

What a lucky world that he was here – what a sad miserably difficult thing to say goodbye. 

Maria Brinker