by Terra_Cide, HSM Editor Emeritus

Courage is contagious. So is cowardice.

- Paulo Coelho

 

Earlier last week, I received some very sad news.

A dear friend of mine, whom I met online many, many years ago, has been fighting cancer for the past year. A very aggressive, malignant facial tumor, the doctors thought they had caught it in time to be proactive about her treatment. Her prognosis, they said, was pretty good.

They were wrong.

I came home Monday to the following Facebook message:

“I have been transfered[sic] to Montreal General Hospital today – paliative[sic] care for my final days. I’m in room [redacted]. Thank you for your love and prayers. Miracles will happen for you all from the other side. Trust me.”

The written word can’t accurately describe that type of blow to the gut. It can’t.

We met back in the early days of the internet, on a fan forum for Tori Amos. Her username was SunshineTimberwolf. Given this was the era before Skype or any sort of stable VoIP, you could only glean what a person was like by how well they could carry themselves in written communication. Her writing style was up-front, acerbically funny, intelligent (little wonder, this, since she was an English teacher and an Anglophile), and unapologetic. If she liked you, you knew it. If she didn’t like you, you also knew it.

She and I clicked right away.

For years, we were virtually connected at the hip, confiding in each other and sharing our “real world” lives with each other. On the forum and its adjacent chatroom, when we were both online, it was as if the Vegas strip turned into words; there was never a dull moment when we were around. Despite whatever internet drama that occurred (what forum doesn’t have its share?), we remained loyal to our friendship. The wannabe alphas could posture and push their respective agendas until everything was in full-blown internet argument mode. We didn’t care. We were there to enjoy ourselves, and our friendship was more important than winning an argument on the internet.

I had never met anyone so alive –  a true bon vivant, but with a bohemian flair. Even when that forum closed a couple years later, we remained close friends, migrating to another forum to keep in touch and to entertain our fellow forumers. I even travelled from where I was living in Toronto to spend New Years Eve with her and her husband, the first of many such trips. Then with the advent of social media, like Facebook, we no longer had to rely on forums and pseudonyms; our friendship had evolved well beyond the need for them by that point anyhow.

We’ve drank champagne and homemade sangria and sang off-color songs. We’ve shared ribald stories and chatted with our brain-to-mouth filters completely in ‘OFF’ mode, with little care who might be in earshot. We’ve posed for silly pictures on top of Mount Royal, in front of the old Olympic Stadium, and in her living room. I have watched her firstborn grow from a toddler (who once tried to wear my knee-high winter boots that were nearly as tall as he) to a teenager, and she in turn got to meet my son, who got to play with her daughter and youngest son. From laughter to tears and everything in between – we shared it all, both online and in person.

It is a very, very bitter pill to swallow when I think about the fact that I may not get the chance to see her one last time. To think that I won’t get the chance to have any sort of closure with the one person who was closer to me than my own sister before she leaves this plane – it eats at me. But no matter what I do or how I feel, I cannot change this fact.

I remember that time that you told me,
“Love is touching souls”
Surely you touched mine
‘Cause part of you pours out of me
In these lines from time to time.

- Joni Mitchell, “A Case of You”

 

So why share this story with you? What did any of that have to do with Home, its announced closing, or videogaming, for that matter?

I’m not the most subtle person in the world, and if you follow me on Twitter, you may have seen the tear I went on Friday night.  It didn’t so much have anything to do directly with the announcement of Home’s closing – I’ve had plenty of time to come full-circle with the platform personally – as it did with the all-too predictable reactions over it.

Here’s the thing – they’re the same reactions that have been trotted out every time any major change has happened to Home over the past five years, and I hate reruns. Especially now that we all know this is it. The homestretch. The final countdown. Call it whatever you like. But if all you’re going to do from now until March 2015 is repeat the same invective that’s been said before, what are you really trying to prove?

Why spend what time there is left going through the same song and dance?

Look at what brought you and kept you in Home. The people you called friends, the places you called your community. It’s not the pixels or the prizes or the items you bought of your own free will that kept you here. It’s the people; it’s the ideas (and perhaps ideals) that mattered to you. Would you diminish them by lamenting the time you wasted, the money you wasted? Those moments of joy with friends – did they mean so little to you as to overlook them completely in favor of ranting about your perceived losses?

There is another option, of course. Isn’t there always?

Passion and dedication are great tools. Use them. Commit to maintaining those friendships – the ones that matter to you – beyond Home. The PlayStation Network isn’t going anywhere, so that’s as good a starting point as any. Facebook and other social media tools have made connecting with friends so much easier than how it was when Sunny and I first met. Remember – the platform doesn’t make the relationship, people do.

Hell, let’s think bigger (this one’s specifically for those fond of soapboxes).

All the passion, for better or worse, demonstrated in the name of making a “better” Home – let’s channel it into our own communities.

I’m serious; if all the people who’ve campaigned for changes in Home turned just a fraction of that energy towards their flesh and blood, brick and mortar communities, just imagine the possibilities. Want to really feel like the past five years weren’t in vain? Then take the confidence that was sown and cultivated in the virtual soil of Home and use it in the real world. There is change to be had – so be it. Because let’s face it – talk is cheap.

If you want to know the “secret” behind any success story on Home, there it is, in black and white.

Rather anticlimactic, really.

They say that it’s the dash between the year you were born and the year you die that matters the most, and often we forget that as we try to live life day by day. In the dash of Home’s life, what will you choose to remember? How will you choose to spend that time?

I’m going to end this piece, what will likely be my final article here, the way it began – with a metaphor. This video has always reminded me of Home (I was in fact introduced to it by a Home friend), especially of its early days, and if you watch and listen to it, I think you’ll see why. Six months may seem like plenty of time, but any parent will tell you it goes by in a flash. The choice on how you spend that time and what you will do after is yours to make. Choose wisely.

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One Response to “…And I Feel Fine”

1. Terra_Cide says:

   October 14, 2014 at 4:08 am

   A little more than two weeks after this article was published, Martine, AKA SunshineTimberwolf, passed away. She is survived by her mother, husband, and three beautiful children, as well as an extraordinary extended family around the world. She was 42.

   Reply