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Carol H Tucker
Passionate about knowledge management and organizational development, expert in loan servicing, virtual world denizen and community facilitator, and a DISNEY fan
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beladona Memorial
Be warned:in this very rich environment where you can immerse yourself so completely, your emotions will become engaged -- and not everyone is cognizant of that. Among the many excellent features of SL, there is no auto-return on hearts, so be wary of where your's wanders...
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so long, old friend
I met Slythief Hyde at the Silver Dollar Saloon a month after he rezzed in world back in 2006. I was dancing with the gentleman I was dating in world at the time and Sly started chatting to me in private IM, trying to convince me to flirt with him -- I was being most discouraging and he was being very persistent! It was an inauspicious beginning, but the result was a friendship that lasted for ten years. -- through his partners, lieges, and wives / through my partners, masters, and husband. It didn't make any difference which avatar -- Coke, Sly, Thunder, Chairene, etc or Bela, kalah, Mira, Van, etc -- we were never romantically involved, or even "best friends," but we were always in touch and I think I was the only person he knew in SL who was on the friends' list for every single alt that he had, and could map him in world on all of them. I danced at his weddings with joy and kept up his spirits when they failed; he proudly gave me away when I got married and comforted me 2 1/2 years later when it dissolved. We danced, talked, played Greedy, rode his trains, worked up through the ranks in Tiny Empires in Second Life…. until it became too much for him to be online....
In real life, we texted, IMed, emailed, posted comments on our Facebook pages, and occasionally chatted on the phone. We told jokes, shared stories, celebrated the ups and commiserated over the downs. When I went to California four years ago, I had planned to spend a day with him and his wife in "real life", but he was just getting over the first cancer treatment and just didn't have the strength for company. "We'll catch up the next time you come out" he said -- but I only make it to the West coast for work and I haven't been back. "We're driving up the East Coast to see the autumn leaves," he told me, and promised he and his wife would spend a couple days here in Maryland -- but the cancer kept coming back and the trip kept getting postponed.
In January, the cancer was back for the 4th time, more virulent, more painful than ever. He decided there was no treatment he was willing to endure, that it was time to let go, and was told he would only have six months left. In early April, I actually got to see him in world, and we talked on the phone the 23rd, but I wasn't there the Saturday [April 30th] when he logged out of Second Life for the last time. And on Sunday, May 29th, my friend logged out of his real life too.
This quote was in his profile for Cokecola Kidd, and I guess it is as good an epitaph as any:
I will miss you old friend…..
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