Shortly after midnight, here on Puget Sound, somewhere in Paris as sunlight dawned, our Marco Beacco died. “Our Marco” does more truly belong to family and friends in France. “Our Marco” is American owned, where he has a mom & dad (us) & a brother, Doug, and extended family and friends galore.

The phrase, “Just around the corner,” belongs to this story. 

If I remember rightly, May 1982, near midnight, Dave and I walked “Just around the corner” of the Massey Theater in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, following a stunning Nana Mouskouri concert. 

“Ah! That looks like Nana’s guitarist,” we agreed, seeing a young, dark-headed man smoking a cigarette under the single light of the elevated concrete stage door entrance—just like a movie might picture it. He, too, was watching.

“Ha-lo,” he said in a deeply accented and beautiful voice. The conversation with this Italian Frenchman began. The conversation led to dinner before a concert in Vancouver, which led to his visit in our Camarillo home, which led to our visit to his apartment on the Ile Saint Louis (or was it the Isle de la Cite?) which led to friendship which led “just around the corner” to his connection of concrete love to our son, Doug, to Lynde’s family in Australia, and Kim’s family in New York, to our relocation in Washington state; to visits, and to reacquaintance with his daughter, Paola, whom we first met as a baby; to his term, “Mom and Dad, my parents,” rather than “Barb and Dave, my friends,” to days and days and hours and hours of togetherness, through sorrows and joys, crazy fun, and serious thoughts of life, to the news of brain cancer, to his fight for life, and to the loss of it.

“Just around the corner,” is every day, every moment of every day. I don’t yet recognize the corner he has just turned but I am remembering turning “just around the corner” in Toronto, and what we discovered there but could have missed had we not been paying attention.