Seeing loved ones die is always the hardest pain. It reminds us of life’s fragility and reignites our estimation for the ones we lose. This applies to people near to us, but also to people we look up to, but never meet in person: idols, role models and childhood heroes. When the latter die, it’s always a strange kind of loss. You never met them, you never had the chance to build an actual relation with them and you never shared memories, experiences or anything like that with them, but about them.

They are the ones that were there when we grew up and explored the realms of fantasy and childlike imagination. They led us through worlds we never dreamed to see and inspired us to become more than just people living their daily lives. Because of them we wanted to become knights, gunslingers, adventurers, astronauts, scientists and so much more. Because of them we wanted to become heroes ourselves. They are the ones who leave an idea in our memory: an idea that is not the same as the love for a beloved person, but not less defining to who we are.

Childhood heroes are like beacons of times gone by that are part of our memory and nostalgia is one of the most wonderful feelings. Most of us know these little moments when you hear a tune of a series opener or see a character or a scene from a movie we loved when we were young and that certain smile of reminiscence appears on our faces. This also happens when we think about people we lost years ago, of course. But this here is not about saying that these people are less important than childhood heroes. It’s about saying that childhood heroes are something that’s sometimes just as important to who we are as so much more that happened during our childhood, because these years are some of the most defining ones to our personality.

Today, Leonard Nimoy died. Mr. Spock died. When I was little and watched it for the first time, the original Star Trek series was already 30 years old. The movies had already been shown on TV for several times and I knew it was just one role Leonard Nimoy played, but this single character was what defined my image of him. He was Spock. He didn’t just play the character: he played the character with devotion. To me, he seemed eternal in this role, immortal.

I will always like to remember this most iconic role and everything related to it. The arguments with Bones, the heroic sacrifice in The Wrath of Khan and the memorable appearances in later installments of the Star Trek franchise. And even though I never really had that much interest in many of the other things he did – which is kind of sad -, I will always remember him and not just the character he played because it was him and nobody else who played the character that was a big part of my childhood.

Rest in peace, Leonard. You will be missed.