Elaine Miriam Katz

Walks can be journeys, moving can be wellness, disease can

set the stage for

an unexpected, unscripted, yet magnificent life.

My world echoes with the hum of something I call bliss, which I will define and redefine ad infinitum forever undaunted.

-Elaine Miriam Katz

Elly was indeed “undaunted”, unbreakable, charting her course to a PhD, until an iatrogenic stroke in 2022 left her progressively disabled and kidnapped her dreams.

She was a bright candle burning in the light and, in the dark, always seeking and finding solutions, tapping into her brilliant scientific mind and her poetic sensitivity. She lived with hope and navigated life’s challenges with grace, creativity and determination. She spent her abbreviated years with purpose, investing all of herself into everything she did from the complexity of splicing RNA to the simplicity of savoring a roll of sushi. She accomplished so much in that abbreviated “well” life, prior to her stroke, working in a Nobel Prize lab at Rockefeller, as an Amgen Scholar, and working at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute. However, her greatest accomplishment was her resilience, her power of consistently finding and seeking a path to return to normal life after medical setbacks. She always knew, she learned the hard way, walking, and so many other small gestures, are precious gifts. How she once cherished the gift of leaving evanescent footprints in the sand. There was nothing she took for granted. Living side by side with her for slightly more than two and half decades before her stroke, kept us, her loving family. constantly aware of how precious every single moment is. We can never thank her enough for that legacy.

Once Elly Katz spoke the language of the flowers. Once she spoke the language of butterflies.

Once she spoke the language of the honeysuckles. She mastered every piece of beautiful nature we shared: a bird refuge on a spa outing, the sound of a waterfall, the way the ocean’s song never came to an end. She had faith she would speak all these languages for decades.

Once she spoke the language of high-level mathematics, genetics and evolutionary biology.

Once she spoke and mastered the entire dictionary, plucking words like flowers at her easy disposal and weaving them together to say precisely and poetically what she wanted the world to know.

Once she spoke the language of spontaneous joy, the thrill of learning to ride a bike, or fly on a scooter, or rock climb to the ceiling. There was no limit. She spoke the language of the reservoir around which she loved to jog. She shared a language with the ducks floating on the water’s surface.

Once she spoke of Jerusalem, Swiss mountain peaks and the Galapagos Islands to which she dreamed of traveling one day.

Once she spoke the language of T.S. Elliot and Kafka and Dostoevsky and Shakespeare. None too esoteric for her to master.

She kept her cerulean eyes wide open and spoke an infinite number of languages, always opened to learning yet another tongue. Unafraid of blundering, or using a word the wrong way. She wanted to be exposed to everything and learn the language even of silence and stillness. She studied yoga and meditation.

Elly truly excelled at everything. Especially biohacking. She preserved her body despite a connective tissue disease and its challenges brilliantly until she could no longer do so. There is so much to be learned from her persistence, her hopes, her quest for knowledge and its applications. Her smile was stunning.

She will be sorely missed. She left this world far too young.