Post by Lady Daniels on Sept 8, 2005 18:12:46 GMT -8
Before I started LARPing, I did chat roleplay on AOL. I played there with a group of friends, took three years off when my life went to hell, and returned. To my relief, many of those I knew "back in the day" are still there. To my grief, there are a few, who are not.
It started in 99, right after I went to the Air Force, performing my familial duty by serving my country. I returned with a medical separation defined as an erroneous enlistment. I tell my AOL buddies that I'm home again, and one of them tells me that my friend Dan Altman died a few days after I left. The last time I had spoken to him, he wished me luck in the service and jokingly demanded I keep in touch. What was thought to be a tumor turned out to be a kidney rupture. He went to the ER, got wired up and went to sleep - and did not wake again. He left behind no wife or children.
I don't know if he had any living kin. I only recently had the nerve to ask his roommate [and amicable college ex, who is part of our group] for a picture of him. She has kept everything she can find about him, in case a relative surfaces. Even now, years later; the mere mention of him makes more than a few of us tear up. It's an unspoken rule, to not speak of him often; the pain is simply too great still for some of us.
Not long after he passed, another of our circle followed. I believe her actual name was Sue Mackenzie, but we all called her Chandra. She was the gentle sort, a fine roleplayer; and she had told the rest of us shortly before I left for Lackland that she had cancer. When I returned, another of our circle told me she succumbed rapidly; several weeks after Dan. Her husband wrote a letter to this mutual friend, telling her that his wife was riddled with the disease by the time she finally gave up. The ultimate cause was brain cancer, but it had not originated there. I am told that Sue left her husband with three children, the oldest in high school; the youngest almost to middle school.
Two years ago, one of our other oldtimers, Chris; abruptly disappeared. He exchanged snail mail with a few of us, and those letters have since stopped. There has been no contact from him, which has been of great concern - he was a guy who kept in touch with many people. I don't know if anyone has tried contacting his kin or visiting his home; but there is fear that he too has been lost.
I was reading the forums for this gaming group today, wondering if my friend John [or proxy] had posted anything. He lives in Biloxi. Instead of information about him, there's something up there from a more recent addition to our group, a cross-post from another forum. One of our former players, Stephen Walters, was driving back to his home from his training base in South Carolina at 1900 hours on 15 Aug. In an attempt to avoid striking an animal that was standing in the road, his Camaro veered off the highway into a ditch and struck a tree, head on. Though he was wearing his seatbelt, the force of the crash not only killed him instantly; but crunched the car so that the fire department spent an hour recovering his body from it.
He had recently completed a year-long tour in Iraq, and had volunteered to return there soon, with his Army Delta Company. He has living kin, but was not survived by a wife or children. I feel a sense of deeper grief, it was me who had brought him into our circle.
I still don't know if John is okay. I know he was living with his mom and younger brother.
I have never met these people. I've only spoken to a few of those in this gaming circle on the phone. Most of them have no idea what I look like, and it's likewise. But I've played with these people, day in and day out, many of them for nearly ten years; and have participated or witnessed the creation and conclusion of some truly marvelous stories. These people, in their own fashion; have poured incredible amounts of creativity and personal dreams and concepts into characters and worlds that are so vibrant and enticing, that I still enjoy them even now, years later. I'm still addicted to the world this gaming crew has created, and the loss of yet another one of them only brings back the pain of the previously departed.
Of all of them, those confirmed and those potential; I miss Dan the most. I cried for three days after I was told that he was gone. The pain has not lessened one whit over the years, and sometimes I wonder if it ever will. But under all of my grief and upset is a sense of deep-seated frustration: my friends are dying before their time, our circle is becoming smaller because life can be cruel. And despite the fact that I know none of these people personally, their loss has affected me nonetheless. Memories of time spent with them, have remained with me despite the distance between now and then.
I'm a realist, and part of me isn't surprised at the injustice or the unfairness. I am reminded that those of us who remain, preserve the stories and characters of those lost as best we can - myself included. Many of our stories intersected, some for years at a time; so it is easy to do. I know of at least two of our number, who have either been published or are near to. In this, we can honor our friends; but it hasn't made the loss any easier to bear.
However, despite the lingering grief; I am honored to have known them - that simple fact has made all the rest, good or bad, well worth it.