How long is forever? A Personal Tribute to my Friend Merino

Merino is no longer physically here, but that doesn’t mean he’s not with us. He will always be my friend, and he will continue to have an impact on my life. There’s still so much I can learn from him, and I’m certain he will keep surprising me for years to come.

This isn’t just another article written for the sake of creating content or keeping up with my sanity. Yes, I failed to maintain my goal of two posts per month. So what? Honestly, I don’t care about that any longer. There are more important things in life than churning out content for a platform like LinkedIn. Most of what you see here isn’t even human-made; it’s AI-generated noise.

My friend Felipe Merino, or just “Merino,” as we called him, understood this better than most. He would occasionally tease me about my efforts to build an audience on LinkedIn. He preferred other platforms, like Instagram, which, in my opinion, is also fake, but perhaps a bit less so than LinkedIn. On Instagram, Merino had already started making a name for himself through his page “Jurisfreak,” where he posted legal memes. He loved poking fun at how overly serious lawyers can be.

And honestly, he had a point. Many lawyers are pompous, toxic, and, frankly, fake, like the self-proclaimed “best lawyer in Chile,” whom Merino loved to mock at every opportunity. I get it. I’ve met plenty of those types, which is why I avoid calling myself a lawyer when I can. I don’t want to be associated with that crowd.

But Merino was different. He was funny, kind, and one of the most genuine people I’ve ever met. More than that, he was a great friend.

As I hinted earlier, this won’t be an article about FinKratt. Instead, it’s about my friend, Merino, who tragically passed away just a bit less than a couple of weeks ago, on August 25th, 2024. He was only 35 years old, and I miss him dearly.

This is my brief personal account of the years I knew him, along with some personal anecdotes. There are countless stories I could share about Merino, but I won’t be able to tell them all. There are also many things we talked about that will remain with me forever, and other conversations that I’ve forgotten, only to resurface during chats with his other friends.

I won’t be disclosing anything I believe would have embarrassed Merino, although, to be honest, there wasn’t much that could embarrass him. He was just that kind of person. Through this article, I hope to share a bit of who Merino was, from my perspective, and explain the role he played in my life. This is my small tribute to him.

Maybe you knew Merino personally, or perhaps you didn’t know him at all. Either way, I’m grateful that you’re here and I hope you’ll take a moment to read my personal reflections. Through my experiences, you can get to know Merino just a little bit better.

2010-2014: Bachelor’s Days

2010: Early Opponents

I first met Merino around 2010, during our first year at law school at Universidad de Chile. We didn’t become friends right away. In fact, I distinctly remember not liking him at all when we first met. Merino was a left-wing student, associated with “Estudiantes Autonomos,” a Marxist student organisation that was quite influential at our university at the time. That movement eventually grew into “Izquierda Autonoma,” and later became part of the broader “Frente Amplio,” the political coalition that helped Gabriel Boric, the current President of Chile, rise to power.

So, yes, Merino was deeply involved with all these left-wing groups, while I was starting to align myself with “Centro Derecha Universitaria,” a centre-right student organisation. Naturally, we didn’t seem like a good match.

To be honest, I felt more rejection coming from him than from my side. Merino was one of the first left-wing people who made me feel excluded, and I hated that feeling. I still vividly recall the moment in the faculty courtyard when he subtly ridiculed me during a debate I was having with someone else about free education. It stung, and I never forgot it.

So no, we didn’t become friends from the start. I only recall that one interaction with him in 2010, though there might have been others I don’t remember. At that point, I didn’t even know his name very well; I just sort of knew who he was. I knew there was this tall, thin guy with a funny haircut named Felipe Merino, but he was just an unimportant figure lingering at the back of my mind.

In fact, sometime around September 2010, or perhaps a bit later, my girlfriend at the time, some friends, and I rented a place in Pichilemu. We went with another group of girls, one of whom was also from my law school. What’s funny is that one of the girls we spent that weekend with turned out to be Merino’s sister. I didn’t even realise this until later! She might have mentioned she was Merino’s sister at the time, but back then, Merino was so insignificant to me that I didn’t pay much attention to it.

One interesting thing I learned on that summer trip was that Merino’s sister had been a classmate of mine in school. She was in the class next door, but we were literally schoolmates. And that meant Merino had also been my schoolmate. He was a couple of years older than us, me and his sister, that is, and had entered law school a bit later because he first studied a Bachelor’s in Social Sciences before moving on to law.

2011: The Quintanos

Anyway, 2011 was the year I really started to get to know Merino. The story goes like this: during the first semester at university, I failed “Introduction to Law I.” This was a prerequisite for most other classes, meaning I couldn’t enrol in certain courses alongside my classmates. As a result, I found myself “out of phase” with most of them for a few semesters. I eventually caught up in the third year.

Failing that class meant that all students in the same situation were stuck in a kind of academic limbo for 3-4 semesters. So, during that time, most of us who had failed “Introduction to Law I” ended up taking the same classes together. The professor who taught the retake of “Introduction to Law I” was Fernando Quintana, and naturally, we started calling ourselves the “Quintanos”, or the “Quintana generation”.

Now, Merino didn’t fail “Introduction to Law I,” but he did fail “Introduction to Law II.” This meant that, while he didn’t fall completely into the limbo that I did, he still had to retake “Introduction to Law II”. As a result, he became an honorary “Quintano” of sorts.

As I mentioned, I reconnected with Merino after he failed “Introduction to Law II,” and we ended up taking the class together. I can’t quite recall our first interaction in 2011, but we started hanging out with a similar group, so naturally, we began chatting more often.

2011 was a particularly difficult year for all of us. The students at my university, and later most public universities across Chile, went on an indefinite strike against the government. Their demand was for free, high-quality education for everyone, with the state funding it through taxes. Initially, I was somewhat drawn into this, which led me to distance myself from the centre-right group I had been involved with, and I found myself supporting the student movement. My girlfriend at the time was a big advocate for the cause, which also influenced my decision to support it.

Merino, of course, was fully on board with the movement, and I remember seeing him at one or two of the massive student protests in downtown Santiago. However, as the days of marches turned into months, we still had no classes. We ended up going nearly six months without any academic activity, and by the end, I was so frustrated with the whole movement that I switched sides, supporting the students who wanted to return to class.

In fact, some other students and I, with Merino loosely involved, organised a counterprotest in the law school courtyard to push for a return to class. We even invited some professors to give “lectures,” though it was mostly for show, and managed to get media coverage, which brought reporters to our faculty to see what we were doing. It sort of worked, as the strike didn’t last much longer, but it also backfired on me and a few others. I became a target for bullying as a result.

Merino was in a similar situation. He had been directly linked to a left-wing movement but was now having second thoughts, which, in our university, was practically heretical. His girlfriend at the time was also quite far left, which likely made things even more challenging for him.

2012: A Deepening Friendship

2012 was also a highly political year at university. We had more classes than the previous year, but there was still a strike lasting a month or two. This was also the year when the Quintanos began to fade out as we rejoined our original classmates from first year in other courses. Probably because of this, some of us Quintanos who had become friends decided to create a WhatsApp group to stay in touch. I was added to the group in April 2012, along with Merino, and it remains my oldest active WhatsApp group to this day.

Now, after the intense politicisation of 2011, I came out of it somewhat of a pariah, having ended up opposing the student protests. I had to endure some very unpleasant situations, which left a lasting emotional wound. It was also the year things started to go wrong between me and my girlfriend, making 2012 an especially difficult time.

However, perhaps due to the difficulties with my girlfriend, I began to lean more on the Quintanos, and among them, Merino became one of my closest friends at university. He had become an assistant to a professor who taught Micro and Macroeconomics, and as a result, had started questioning some of his left-wing ideas. On top of that, he was also going through a rough patch with his girlfriend. Knowing that he understood how I felt, and that he could count on me in return, really strengthened our bond during that time.

This same year, I started working as a paralegal at Alcalde & Cia. Some of my friends and classmates had also begun working, but securing a job as a paralegal was still difficult. So, in March 2013, when I decided to quit my job, I immediately recommended Merino to replace me, and he became a paralegal at Alcalde & Cia.

I remember my last week working there vividly, as it was one of the worst weeks of my life, and Merino was a huge support during that time. My girlfriend had recently broken up with me, and I was devastated. I could barely concentrate and was grieving the breakup as if I had lost someone to death.

In that emotional state, despite my previous excellent work at Alcalde, I made my first mistake on the job, and it filled me with shame. It felt even worse because I made the mistake while training Merino, and it happened during my very last week at Alcalde & Cia. To top it all off, that same week, a dear great-uncle of mine passed away, which meant I had to attend his funeral amidst everything else.

Merino quickly realised I was going through a rough time, so he encouraged me to attend a party organised by our law school at “Cajon del Maipo.” I was grieving deeply, the loss of my girlfriend, my great-uncle, and the mistake at work, so, as you might expect from a 21-year-old, I ended up drinking more than usual at the party. But Merino was there for me. He looked out for me on that party, and overall during those turbulent times. He had also recently come out of a long-term relationship, so we kept each other company through it all.

2013: Further Challenges

2013 was also a quite difficult year for me. People who I had considered friends suddenly stopped greeting me at university. I never fully understood why, but it was clearly related to my breakup. Only one person from that group of people ever apologised for this, she did so in 2018, and I will always be grateful for that.

Merino wasn’t part of the same group of friends as my ex-girlfriend, but somehow, he also received similar treatment from some people. There were some truly unpleasant situations during that time.

By chance, Merino and I ended up taking Labour Law together that year. The professor was unlike the ones we were used to at university. With a few exceptions, most of our professors were either extremely old, some even over 90, Marxist, or incredibly pretentious. This professor, however, was different. Instead of assigning Marxist literature, we were asked to read von Bohm-Bawerk, Mises, and Hayek.

This exposure to libertarian ideas opened both mine and Merino’s eyes, and it brought us even closer together.

To give you an idea of the degree of left-wing extremism that could be encountered at our university, some of our classmates used to joke about who would end up “against the wall” when the revolution triumphed. Naturally, Merino and I were among those people. I remember one particular classmate trying to explain that Merino and I could never truly be good people because we were on the right, and in their view, only those on the left could be good. The fact that this person somewhat liked us didn’t mean we were good; it just meant we were “acceptable.” They even joked that, when the revolution came, we might be allowed to escape.

Back then, I used to laugh off these jokes and didn’t take them seriously. Now, I know better.

2014: The End of Full-Time Classes

After the tough years of 2012 and 2013, 2014 was a good year for me. We were finishing up our full-time classes for our Bachelor’s degree, law school in Chile is five full years of classes, so I entered 2014 feeling hopeful. For me, it was a positive year, but perhaps not so much for Merino. He had his heart broken that year and was down for a while. I spent quite a lot of time trying to cheer him up, taking him out to parties and events to help keep his mind occupied.

One party with him especially stands out in my memory. We went to a classmate’s birthday party, and since it got very late and we were both drunk, Merino came back to my place. The next day, we woke up very late, both extremely hungover, and Merino offered to cook. He decided to make some pasta and ended up producing the worst pasta dish I’ve ever seen in my life! I’m not sure how long he cooked the pasta for, but it must have been close to an hour. Then he added ketchup on top and thought it was somehow edible.

Naturally, I made fun of his cooking skills, and he defended himself by saying that everything could be improved with a bit of ketchup. That’s when I realised that his favourite condiment was ketchup! After that, I started noticing that he put ketchup on just about everything. It was quite the revelation. Hahaha!

2015-2017: The Bar Exam Years

2015: Merino and the Bar

Merino graduated at the end of 2014 and immediately began studying for the Bar Exam, as most law students do after completing their Bachelor’s in Law. This meant that in 2015, he was fully committed to preparing for the Bar. Since I didn’t start my own studies until the second semester of 2015, we didn’t see much of each other during the first half of the year. However, in the second semester, I also began studying for the Bar, and I joined him in some of those long study sessions.

Just to give you an idea, studying for the Bar typically involves dedicating 8-10 hours a day, 5-6 days a week, for 8-10 months. Back then, Merino was studying daily at the library in La Reina Municipality, which was quite close to where I lived, so I joined him there. The library itself wasn’t anything special, but since hardly anyone went there, it suited our needs perfectly.

At the time, Merino was dating a girl who would occasionally visit him at the library. I never quite figured out whether she lived or worked nearby, but she seemed to visit fairly often. I remember one time arriving at the library, seeing Merino’s things on a desk but no sign of him. I figured he was probably in the toilet or something, but it struck me as odd that he’d leave all his stuff unattended since it could easily be stolen.

I sat down and began studying, only to hear loud kissing noises echoing through the library. Curious, I glanced in the direction of the sounds and saw Merino’s foot hanging off the one and only sofa in the room. I immediately realised what was happening. Merino was getting a visit from his girlfriend, haha!

Now, you’d think this was just a one-off occurrence, but it became well known at the library that Merino was half studying and half making out. He knew just about everyone working there and had especially befriended one of the cleaning ladies, who would always giggle and say something like, “Behave yourself, Felipe, and treat your girlfriend well!”

By the way, Merino didn’t like being called “Merino”. He preferred “Felipe.” But none of his university friends ever got used to calling him that, so we all stuck with “Merino.”

At the end of 2015, Merino passed his Bar exam, and all of his friends, including myself, went to congratulate him at the university. Passing the Bar exam is no small feat. You spend close to a year preparing for this 40-50 minute oral exam, which is notoriously difficult. In fact, almost half of the candidates fail.

There’s a wonderful picture of him from that day with his closest friends from university and beyond, as well as his sister. We were all so happy for him, and he was absolutely ecstatic. It was an amazing moment!

Unfortunately, that joy was short-lived, as his girlfriend broke up with him just a few days after he passed the Bar. He was devastated, and once again, we all rallied around to hang out with him and try to cheer him up.

2016: Me and the Bar

I didn’t take the Bar exam in 2015 and decided to take more time to study for it. Since Merino was no longer studying at the La Reina Municipality library, I didn’t feel like going there alone. So, I decided to head to my family’s summer house in Costa Brava to continue my studies. It’s a lovely house with a great view of the Pacific Ocean, so it seemed like the perfect place to focus.

However, being alone in such a big house didn’t seem ideal, so I asked Merino if he wanted to come visit while I studied. At the time, he was working on his Bachelor’s thesis, so he could continue writing it at the beach. He came over around March or April 2016 and stayed with me for about a week or a week and a half.

I remember him offering to cook lunch for me, but I quickly declined, fully aware of his well-earned reputation as the worst cook I knew. Instead, I took charge of the meals. Of course, he didn’t like most of the food I made and insisted on adding ketchup to everything. Since I didn’t have any ketchup in the house, we went grocery shopping, and the first two things we put in the shopping cart were ketchup and beers. Two of Merino’s essentials. He truly loved his ketchup!

I also remember him poking fun at me for eating so many beans. Back then, I was going to the gym quite a lot, and beans were a cheap and nutritious source of protein, but Merino found it hilarious.

After returning to Santiago to continue studying for the Bar, Merino and I didn’t see much of each other for the rest of 2016. When I finally took my Bar exam at the end of that year, Merino was one of the friends who came to support me. We even have a picture together from that day, with some of the Quintanos and other friends from university and beyond.

2017: My Move Abroad

As soon as I passed the Bar, I applied for the mandatory internship required to officially become a lawyer. There were no available positions in Santiago for the next three months, so I decided to do my internship in Valparaiso, which was conveniently close to my family’s house in Costa Brava. Around that time, Merino became involved in a project called the Warsaw Latin Convention, which essentially brought a group of Polish girls to Chile. Naturally, Merino, ever the Latin lover, invited me to meet them, and we ended up spending a weekend at my family’s house. It was a fantastic time! Of course, true to form, Merino started dating one of the girls, beginning a long-distance relationship.

Merino and I saw each other quite often during those few months. Whenever I visited Santiago, we would hang out, and he came to visit me a couple of times at the beach house as well.

In mid-2017, I had the opportunity to go to Estonia for a programme for Estonians living abroad. So, as soon as I finished my internship, I packed my bags and left Chile, first for Germany and then to Estonia. Originally, I was supposed to return to Chile after a month or two, but since there wasn’t much waiting for me back home, and I wasn’t particularly excited about working as a lawyer in a firm, I decided to stay in Berlin for a few months.

At first, it seemed like a great plan. My relatives in Berlin were supposed to welcome me warmly, and I thought it would be a fantastic experience. However, after just a day there, I realised that things were not as I had expected. My relatives were struggling mentally. My cousin seemed to suffer from schizophrenia, and my aunt had her own mental health issues, though since neither of them believed in western medicine, I can’t say for sure what it was. What I did know was that they were antivaxxers who drank chlorine, which they referred to as “Miracle Mineral Solution.”

Before long, it was obvious that I would be a burden to them. After initially encouraging me to come and warmly welcoming me, they suddenly rejected me. This made me feel terrible, and I had some long phone calls with Merino during that time. He tried his best to cheer me up, telling me that “at least I was in Europe” and encouraging me to stay there rather than return to Chile.

2018-2023: Lasting Memories

2018 & 2019: Reunions in Chile

After spending a few months in Berlin and essentially running out of money, I got a job in Estonia and permanently moved there. Throughout this time, I stayed in touch with Merino, who was constantly thinking about moving abroad. He had dreams of studying in the UK and was planning his life around that goal. Since I was in Estonia and he was in Chile, we didn’t get the chance to see each other. However, when I visited Chile in late 2018 to take my oath as a lawyer, we hung out as if no time had passed at all.

In August 2019, I returned to Chile, this time with my girlfriend. It was her first time in Latin America, and coming from Spain, she was fascinated by everything, especially noticing the differences between Chile and Spain. One of the things she was particularly interested in was the “cafe con piernas.” When I mentioned this to Merino, he got really excited. He had been working as a lawyer in Santiago’s city centre for some time and was quite familiar with the world of the “cafes con piernas,” so he offered to take us to one of the best ones.

He took us to a place called Ikabaru, located in Galeria Alessandri, just a couple of blocks away from La Moneda, the presidential palace. My girlfriend was thrilled, and we ended up chatting with one of the girls working there, who explained all about the business. I remember that 2019 visit to Chile fondly. It was the first time my girlfriend was meeting my Chilean friends, including Merino, so it was quite an important trip. We had an amazing time, and Merino and my girlfriend got along really well.

2021: Reconnecting in London

Covid hit in early 2020, and I didn’t see Merino for the next couple of years. In October 2021, I visited London, where Merino was studying an LLM at Queen Mary University of London. He was so happy and incredibly proud of this achievement. I was only staying in London for five days, and we made sure to see each other every single day.

On the first day we hung out, he took me on one of his famous “Meritours.” We grabbed bikes and cycled from Hackney down to the City of London, crossed the Thames via Tower Bridge, and then crossed back over Waterloo Bridge, eventually ending up in a cheap bar he knew in the area. We had a few beers and made plans to meet again in a couple of days with my girlfriend and his American girlfriend, who was visiting him in London.

The next day, he texted me to say he was near my hotel with his girlfriend, so the three of us met for a coffee. We briefly discussed meeting later for a beer, but I had a lot of work to catch up on and wanted to visit some museums, so I told him I’d let him know.

What’s funny is that, after visiting the British Museum, I was heading to Holborn station to catch the tube, and I randomly stumbled upon Merino and a bunch of his classmates! We hadn’t texted, but since we bumped into each other, we decided to go for a couple of pints at a nearby bar. It was interesting to see how many people Merino seemed to know. Perhaps they weren’t all his friends, but he had this way of approaching everyone like he’d known them forever. Such a “Latin lawyer,” as he used to call himself.

On my last evening in London, we finally went out together with both his girlfriend and mine, and we had an absolute blast. We went to a cocktail bar that also served food and good beers. It was a really nice place, and they had happy hour going on. I remember Merino being so full of energy, cracking jokes and getting along brilliantly with both his girlfriend and mine.

One particularly funny moment stands out: Merino spotted someone in the bar who he swore was the doppelganger of one of our friends from Chile. He even went up to the guy and asked him to take a picture with us so we could send it to our friend. I have no idea what happened to that picture, but it was hilarious because the guy did actually look a lot like our friend!

Merino was super excited about his life in London and what the future might hold for him. He was already making plans to stay in London instead of returning to Chile. He told me all about his plan, and while I thought it sounded a bit crazy, I was genuinely happy for him. It was clear he was doing so much and enjoying life.

Unlike some of our Chilean friends who had come to the UK for a Master’s in Law, only to apply for high-level positions at UK law firms, get rejected, and leave London frustrated to return to Chile with bitter feelings, Merino had a different approach. He was determined to stay in London, and in the meantime, he was working at whatever jobs he could find. He wasn’t waiting around for some perfect opportunity; he was committed to making it work.

2023: The Best Birthday Surprise

Once again, I didn’t see Merino for the next couple of years. We kept in touch mostly through WhatsApp and Instagram. He was one of my main Instagram contacts, as we regularly sent each other reels and funny memes, at least every other day. Merino was a true meme master, sometimes too good at it, as he had a knack for sending me some pretty NSFW content. Hahaha!

The next time I saw him was in June 2023, just last year. I remember it clearly. It was a sunny day, and I was working and minding my own business when my girlfriend told me she was expecting a package at home. This wasn’t unusual, as she often receives packages, so I didn’t think much of it. Suddenly, I heard a familiar voice shouting, “Surprise!”

It was Merino, standing right in front of me. I was completely shocked! I hadn’t been expecting him at all, and, to be honest, I was a bit nervous too. I knew Merino loved to party hard, and I wasn’t sure if my girlfriend was fully aware of just how much of a hardcore party animal he could be. She hadn’t met that side of him yet!

As it turned out, Merino was in Tallinn because of my birthday. He had secretly asked my girlfriend if he could come as a surprise, and she had agreed. Oh boy, oh boy!

Merino wasn’t working full-time yet, as he was just finishing his LLM studies. So, the first thing he asked for was a beer, and he immediately urged me to go out with him. It was still early, though, so I asked him to wait until after 5pm. And, sure enough, at exactly 5pm, there he was, waiting like an eager puppy, ready to head out to the Old Town. We spent some time sightseeing before heading to a bar for a few drinks.

That first night with Merino was great. We met a Chilean couple at the bar and ended up hanging out with them for the rest of the night. In fact, we went out for drinks every single night he was in Tallinn. It was exhausting, but also absolutely amazing. I had such a great time with him here!

One of those days, before we went out for drinks, I remember cooking him some pasta al aglio olio e pepperoncino. I had premium ingredients: fresh garlic, high-quality Italian pasta, one of the best olive oils available, and pepperoncino that I had brought back from Naples. Merino had never tried such a dish before, and when I served it to him, he looked confused and asked, “Where’s the sauce?”

I explained that the “sauce” was actually the olive oil infused with garlic and pepperoncino. But I guess he didn’t quite get it, because he then asked me for ketchup. At first, I laughed, but I also felt a bit annoyed inside. I told him I couldn’t possibly let him eat such a high-quality pasta dish with ketchup. I refused to give him any, and so he had to eat the pasta as it was, though I could tell he didn’t enjoy it at all.

Looking back, I regret not giving him the ketchup. He would have been so much happier!

On my birthday, I organised a barbecue at the beach in Stroomi, and a lot of friends came over. Merino, as usual, became the heart of the party and, of course, managed to get me to end the night at a bar with a couple of final beers.

Now, while I was having a blast, I can’t say everything was perfect with him here. Merino was such a party animal and so chaotic at times that, on one of his last days, my girlfriend subtly “encouraged” us to go out so she could have a day to herself to rest. We ended up taking an incredibly long walk from Pelgulinn all the way to Kadriorg and then Pirita.

During that walk, Merino opened up to me about how he was feeling in London. He was extremely happy to be there, but after his recent breakup, he admitted to feeling lonely. For as long as I’d known him, Merino had been an agnostic. This might have been influenced by our university and the political circles he was part of, where being a believer wasn’t exactly popular. On the left, you were typically expected to be agnostic or atheist. As a now-famous politician and former classmate of ours recently said, “If I want to set fire to something, let it be the Church and Pinochet’s Constitution.”

However, Merino told me that he had recently started going back to church. He had been Catholic in his youth but had renounced Catholicism when he entered university. Now, he once again considered himself a believer and was very happy to be reconnecting with his faith and the Church. He shared how talking to his priest had helped him a lot, and how being part of a community was really uplifting for him.

While I’m not a believer myself, seeing Merino confident that his faith was helping him made me happy. Even though he didn’t seem as happy as before, it was reassuring to know he was doing something to seek support.

Merino’s trip to Estonia left us with so many anecdotes. At the time, some of them felt bittersweet because he was incredibly messy, and could sometimes come across as a bit odd to people meeting him for the first time. But now, I look back on all of those memories with nostalgia. Yes, Merino was messy, but he was my messy friend!

2024: A Final Goodbye

January-July: One Last Meeting

After Merino left Estonia, he returned to the UK, where he secured an internship before heading back to Chile at the end of 2023. I travelled to Chile in January 2024, so naturally, we met up again. I remember that Merino had recently been seeing a girl who had just broken up with him. They had only been going out for a month. So, of course, we went to a bar to talk it over and cheer him up.

We started at a bar in Tobalaba and then moved on to a beer-only bar across from the apartment where he was soon going to move after living at his parents’ place upon his return to Chile. The bar was on Santa Magdalena Street in Providencia, and we went there with Merino and another Quintano friend. We chatted for hours, and as it got late, just before the bar was about to close, Merino called his friend and soon-to-be flatmate to come across the street and join us for a final beer. He came over, and we had a few laughs together.

As the night drew to a close, I ordered an Uber to head home. I gave Merino a hug and said something like, “See you soon.” Merino stayed behind, continuing to chat with his friends, while I got into the Uber and waved goodbye.

I didn’t know that would be the last time I’d ever see Merino.

When I returned to Estonia, Merino and I, of course, kept in touch. After all, he was my second contact on Instagram. Any time I shared a reel, Merino was second on the list after my girlfriend. He was also my go-to for WhatsApp stickers and politically incorrect conversations. If I wanted to discuss something weird or a bit too politically incorrect, I could always count on Merino. He always had an opinion on whatever topic I brought up.

In the months leading up to his death, we chatted a lot. He had all sorts of random plans and ideas. Some of them were actually quite good. He told me he was interested in learning to code because he had an idea for an events-dating app. He was fed up with Tinder and Bumble and thought it would be much better to have an app that encouraged direct, in-person interactions rather than just online exchanges that often led nowhere.

I still have some of his ideas written down in our conversation on Signal, and I might revisit them in the future.

August 2024: A Sudden Farewell

In Merino’s last week, or maybe the last couple of weeks, we had a disagreement. It wasn’t anything harsh, and we treated it somewhat like a joke to an extent, but it was still a disagreement, and we both felt it. Merino passed away on August 25th, and we more or less patched things up by August 23rd. On August 24th, I saw an Instagram story of him at a party. This was typical of him, as he was always out and about.

I texted him on Instagram, and we playfully ranted about our disagreement, already laughing and back on good terms. His last message to me was sent at 4:28 am Chilean time on August 25th. I replied at 4:37 am, expecting a response. When I didn’t hear back and saw that he hadn’t read my messages, I assumed he was still out partying or had gone to bed. With Merino, you could never be sure, but the idea of him still partying seemed more likely.

The next day, I went to the beach with my girlfriend and a friend of ours, and we ended up reminiscing about Merino’s visit to Estonia. We laughed about some of the anecdotes from Tallinn. I checked my Instagram to see if Merino had replied, but he still hadn’t seen my messages. Again, I thought nothing of it, figuring he was likely dealing with a massive hangover and hadn’t fully woken up yet.

Before going to bed that evening, I sent him a meme and grew a bit curious as to why he hadn’t even seen my earlier messages. I thought, “Stupid Merino, he’s probably lost his phone,” but didn’t give it much importance. I set my alarm for 5am, planning to go to the gym at 6am, and went to sleep.

My alarm went off at 5am, and when I checked my phone, I had over 1,000 WhatsApp messages and multiple missed calls. My first thought was, “The Russians are here.” But when I looked more closely, I saw that the messages were from my Chilean groups and Chilean contacts in general. That’s when I saw the news: Merino had passed away in a car accident in Concepcion. I just couldn’t believe it. I had been texting him the day before.

I immediately started calling friends to verify the news and spent the next 4-5 hours on the phone with multiple people. It was a truly traumatic experience. My dear friend was gone.

Trying to Find Some Meaning

The following days were even worse. Being so far away, I couldn’t be there physically with my friends, attend the funeral in person. I attended online. I couldn’t do anything to feel close to him. Naturally, I didn’t do any work on FinKratt. I couldn’t focus, and to be honest, I stopped caring about doing any work at all.

It’s now been two weeks since his death, and I still can’t believe it. I suppose the distance makes it feel even more surreal. I look at his Instagram profile and re-read our last conversations, and it feels like this is all just a bad dream. I’ve even fantasised that Merino isn’t really dead, that he’s faked his death to avoid paying his education loans.

I’ve also thought endlessly about what I could have done to prevent his death. He was only 35, with so many plans and such a bright future ahead.

I don’t believe in God, in heaven, or in any of those sorts of things. However, there was something the priest said during Merino’s funeral that resonated with me. Playing around with the concept of the first law of thermodynamics, he suggested that the soul doesn’t get destroyed but simply transforms. While I don’t believe in a soul in the way Catholicism describes it, I completely agree with the priest’s sentiment: even though Merino may no longer be here physically, he’s still with us in some way.

He’s with me whenever I come across a politically incorrect meme, watch a funny reel, or put ketchup on my food. He’s present when I chat with our mutual friends or when my girlfriend and I remember about funny moments, wondering what Merino would have thought of them. He’s there when I visit the places we explored together in Tallinn, and I know he’ll be with me when I visit London, his favourite city in the world. And, without fail, I’ll always think of him whenever I go shopping and see Merino wool.

So yes, Merino is no longer physically here, but that doesn’t mean he’s not with us. He will always be my friend, and he will continue to have an impact on my life. There’s still so much I can learn from him, and I’m certain he will keep surprising me for years to come.

A good friend from university sent me this quote upon hearing of Merino’s passing:

Alice: How long is forever? White Rabbit: Sometimes, just one second.

The quote, from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, has made me think a lot. I mean, we all know in the back of our minds that death comes for everyone, but we still somehow feel that our lives are infinite, that we’re immortal. Regardless of whether you believe in an afterlife or not, we can all agree that even if there is something after this life, it won’t be this life. Whatever comes next, whether it’s heaven or nothing, is permanent. It’s forever.

So, even if what comes next is better, we should still do our best to enjoy the present. We need to make sure we’re spending our time doing what we love, with the people we care about, and, most importantly, making sure that the people we love truly feel loved. Because forever is coming, and sometimes it can come in just one second.

P.S.

The picture for this article wasn’t taken by me, but by a friend who attended Merino’s funeral. One of our Quintano friends brought a bottle of ketchup to the funeral instead of flowers and placed it among the hundreds of flowers laid on Merino’s coffin before he was buried. I think Merino would have loved that. It would have definitely made him laugh. He really did love his ketchup!

Originally published on LinkedIn.