I logged in tonight, the first time since last Wednesday or Thursday. I wanted to say hello and get hugs from friends, and pick up some notes that people had left for me. I thought maybe it would be good practice, to be around a few people, because I’m going to be faced with a crowded memorial on Sunday. But I never realized how hard it would be to stand there, on our little island in the sky, and look at the things my husband had made. It’s just a little virtual house, but we’d taken so much time to set everything just so, and he was so proud of how he’d landscaped it, and arranged everything. We couldn’t afford our dream house in real life, so we were building our little dream in SL and making it our perfect oasis.

And it is just little, silly things that made me cry buckets… the new benches that I’d bought because they had cute couples poses that I couldn’t wait to get him in world to try out with me… the little hat he’d put on my flamingo that was a mini version of the one he was wearing around…

Then I went down to the sim to sit by the campfire and express my thanks to my friends for being there for me, and of course I’m surrounded by more of his things. His hand was everywhere, and I wanted to turn to him and say how nice something looked, or show him an avatar or just ask him to log in for a little while and listen to the music and sit next to me, but of course I can’t do that.

One of our good friends, Kannonji’s founder, put my hub’s photo on the altar in remembrance. If my response to this is anything like how I’ll respond to the memorial on Sunday I hate to think what a mess I’ll be. RL has been almost impossible to face for the past week. I realized tonight I don’t know if I can face SL without him.