This week a remarkable man, a pillar of my home town community and someone I utterly adore, slipped from this life.

The irony of one of the biggest-hearted and most-alive human beings you’ve ever known having a heart attack and dying is just the start of it.

There is a lot to say, and at the same time absolutely nothing that will make this tragedy any less so.

So I will say this.

Could we please do more things now. Could we please resist the temptation to live as if we have an endless supply of tomorrows. Because while some of us may, and that is a beautiful thing, there is no way of knowing, until knowing comes much too late. Could we please send the note we meant to, chase the dreams we meant to, love the people we meant to, and rage against the things we meant to. Could we please guard what matters and discard the rest. Could our breaths be a little deeper, our eyes a little wider, and our words a little kinder.

There is little consolation in a beloved life taken too soon, but there is some tiny respite in the way that Giovanni was so fiercely alive, so uncompromised, so playful, so generous, such an example of doing things now, of living large, of celebrating life and love not just on special occasions but with every single breath. For that, and for decades of cake, coffee, and conversation, I join countless others feeling grateful that Giovanni has lived, and shattered that he has died.

With all the love to Jodi, Ysha and Ale Giorno.