Today I made a observation of Beautiful Corydalis for the first time, then I check the observers list and found marina had made 18 observations of this plant, I visit her home page and found the sad news. Rest in peace, young lady.
I am saddened for your loss. I enjoyed Marina’s observations. i wish you peace.
I enjoyed communiationg in the forum with her. I have been lax on iNat (both the app & forum) for a while so I remembered her name & went to look her up. I’m sorry to discover this & wish I had resumed communication sooner.
Didnt know her. But RIP. That many observations is truly a work of art. Blessings to her surviving family.
Thank you all so much for your warm words of support. This is an extremely difficult situation for me, but step by step, I — along with everyone close to her — am trying to move forward.
I would like to keep this memorial open a little longer, so that people who knew her, even if they were only rarely in touch, still have the chance to write a few words.
What a lovely photo of her. Thank you. 
Please be generous and kind with yourself as you grieve. Moving forward may take longer and that would be OK; Marina was remarkable so there is no reason she should not leave a remarkable wake behind her.
May I ask something of you @aigorbunov ? Do you by any chance have the photo of Marina in the winter hat with pom poms?
She used it as her profile photo for some time before she changed it. For me, it was probably my favorite of hers and I think maybe also for others. It is how I pictured her whenever she tagged me on a snowy coated animal and what still springs to mind these days if I stumble across an observation of one. It would be a balm to see that photo again.
Thank you again for graciously sharing Marina with us.
There she is in that wonderful hat! I think the photo Marina used was framed slightly differently but this made my heart sing just the same.
Marina had excellent taste; this is a delightful photo. (I especially appreciate the two photos paired together, I think.)
Thank you for finding and sharing these. :)
Jason, I have missed your voice here. I was away when Marina left and so did not see her string of letters (or the demands from others that she take a stand regarding inter-country political matters).
I have taken several substantial breaks over the years, not for any reason having to do with iNaturalist but because life. And so when I notice someone has gone quiet on the forums or iNat, I (rightly or wrongly) just assume the same - life.
But here we are with an openly grieving, young husband and while your perception of patterns of reasons may or may not be true (I do not know, obviously), I think if you could offer remembrances of Marina, that would be a kindness to him.
Your point to the rest of us, how we can and need to do better, absolutely merits discussion (forum feedback?).
I only found out a couple days ago that she had died. I’ve been away from the Forum for a long time, but I came back for that reason. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but she was important to me, too.
Indeed not. For some of us, that’s what made her so relatable and memorable.
Yes, it is true. And it’s unfortunate. I don’t know who she might have shared with, but I remember noticing her absence, too, and reaching out. I still have the PM threads. But she was still active on the main platform, and now, months after her passing, she is still at the top of some of the identfier leaderboards. That’s how I found out: I happened to see her face on a leaderboard and clicked through to see what she had been up to. 330382 IDs made for others, according to her profile stats – that will take awhile for most of us to match!
Love this photo! Thank you for sharing it
Today, I reached 322,879 identifications—the same number that Marina achieved. It feels like an appropriate moment to share a few words.
I remember waking up one day and noticing that I had received more than 100 identifications on my observations, far more than usual. I soon discovered that Marina had gone through my observations and was able to identify a large number of millipedes, some even to species level. My impression was that her identifications were exceptionally accurate and carefully considered. She must have been a remarkably knowledgeable and intelligent person.
I was very grateful for her help and sent her a short message to thank her. In return, I tried to assist Marina whenever I could, mostly with Tipulidae. I was able to identify a number of observations of Nephrotoma analis, and even today she remains one of the top observers of this species.
I wish you strength as you cope with this loss, and I hope that, in time, you find a way forward that brings you peace and comfort.
Beautiful photo! I wanted to let you know that the topic timer was already previously removed, so the topic does not close automatically after 2 months.
Each time one of her (many and informed) IDs comes up, I remember her.
I really appreciate this photo as well as the one you posted before. I think of them as beautiful vistas that Marina might have seen. (They look very different from the landscape outside my own window.)
@bouteloua has indicated this thread will stay open for at least some time, for which I am also grateful. I hope that calmed any concern you had that she might be disappearing from here.
I also wanted to note the aspect @tiwane first touched on and @DianaStuder mentioned later. I have also had the experience of it: Marina continuing to appear on iNaturalist in the form of her identifications. She was generous with her knowledge and so prolific that she pops up wonderfully on observations from when I was just beginning that are now being further refined. (When it happens, I reach out and touch the screen with my finger, which is silly, I know.)
The photo you posted today, coupled with Marina’s ID popups, brought to mind the well known poem Immortality. Do you know this poem?
Do not stand
By my grave, and weep.
I am not there,
I do not sleep—
I am the thousand winds that blow
I am the diamond glints in snow
I am the sunlight on ripened grain,
I am the gentle, autumn rain.
As you awake with morning’s hush,
I am the swift, up-flinging rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight,
I am the day transcending night.
Do not stand
By my grave, and cry—
I am not there,
I did not die.— Clare Harner, The Gypsy, December 1934
If we are seeing flashes of Marina here, in identifications, I cannot help but think you must be reminded of her constantly by the nature surrounding you @aigorbunov . I am hopeful you feel her still in a way that is reassuring.
For us at least, Marina is immortal in a sense, in that her identifications will live on and pop up anew each time someone else refines or confirms or comments, etc. Since she was fiercely brave and would offer at least broad IDs in far flung locales (always correct, mind), even those of us at a great distance get to enjoy this phenomenon.
I look forward to seeing more photos from Marina’s life and homeland. Here she is missed but not gone, all at the same time.
Thanks for the kind words. I’ve always felt that nothing really vanishes from this world — the law of conservation of energy says as much. And I believe that holds true for both physical things and the life of the spirit. So yes, Marina has just taken on a different form — in observations, in photos, in the sketches she left us.
Sadly, we don’t study many foreign poets in Russian schools. Off the top of my head, I only remember Shakespeare, Byron, and Goethe. That poem really is lovely, though.