From The Author:
Hello. It is New Year’s Eve, 2023, as I write this. Most of you know this is a story blog, with lots of photographs of cool Second Life stuff and the things my characters do with them, their exploits, their journeys, that kind of thing.
I’m taking a bit of a blog holiday, so I won’t be doing many stories until probably mid January at the very earliest.
So why break the fourth wall on this night?
It’s because, twenty years ago tonight, I met the love of my life, Joe Raftery, at a party I was seriously considering just not attending. But my friend Terence fixed it so I would be there. I wore the wrong thing, thought I looked ghastly, and entered into my Sister Brenda’s house feeling mostly anxious and out of sorts.
And then one of my dearest friends in the world, Rob, came in the door with his wife, Larissa, and their houseguests, three visiting filkers from England who were here to support the Guest of Honour at the upcoming GaFilk convention (held every year in Atlanta in January). We were all going to be there.
Joe, and his daughters Anna and Emily, were playing the happy tourists, mingling and all that, and I couldn’t take my eyes off Joe. Which is funny, because if I have a ‘type’, Joe was not it. He was tall (ok, that works!), very slender (what?), pale, blue-eyed, Irish.
That night became the beginning of everything for me. If you can be reborn at 37, that’s what happened to me. Joe, and Joe’s unrelenting and ceaseless love, changed everything for me.
We stayed up all night talking. I kissed five people just after midnight just to get to kiss Joe as well (so subtle!). And after that, for the next twelve years, my life was a fairy tale.
If I’d known then what I know now, I still would have done it. All of it. I’d have gone to London to visit, said yes after a month of pleasant cohabitation, and moved away from the United States for good within six months. I’d have dealt with the months in Singapore, endured the scariness of visa acquisition, walked through all those weird spaces toward becoming a blended family, including learning how wonderful my amazing stepdaughters were and how not to make them angry and the added bonus of becoming close friends with my sister widow, Filomena. In the meantime, my beautiful son Gavin grew into a thoughtful young man and moved back to California, my nephew became the dad to two boys I’ve never met, my sister retired. And, of course, I spent all those sleepless nights and A&E trips until I finally awoke on the morning of 29 January, 2016, to find that he’d moved from this world into the cosmos.
I would not change a thing. There are things I might change about what’s happened in the almost eight years since his death, but if changing those things meant giving up Joe and our twelve wonderful years together, I’d say nope; give me all the hell that follows, just for those twelve years.
When people find out I am a widow, they tell me they are sorry for my loss. And of course, not having Joe healthy and alive and giving me that soft kiss at this moment, the moment of midnight, tonight, right here, that’s a loss. But I do not grieve on a widow’s walk. Instead, I try to be the person Joe believed I could be. I try to do what I do well and fully, love people thoroughly even from a distance, and when I can, save the world one soul at a time.
Joe and I used to say we’d be that couple in the old folks’ home the orderlies were constantly telling to stop that public cuddling. And, if there’s a time when I’m bitter, it’s when I see two old souls who’ve clearly been together for decades holding hands or walking arm in arm.
But I also know that according to Joe’s belief system (he was an atheist), his atoms are wheeling around in the cosmos. I am breathing him in. I am rolling through him in my sleep and walking with him when I am awake. Grief is not a feeling, not a burden, not an obstacle. Grief is a friend walking always beside me.
So Joe, in all your scattered cosmic wonder, happy twentieth anniversary. I love you as much today as I did the day you asked me to marry you. And I’d do it all again, every minute of it. Every second.
My love, my life, the love of my life. Thank you for everything you gave to me and everything you still give to me. I am your grateful sunshine, your lady doctor, your singer of songs, and your player of harps. I brought you sunshine; you gave me everything. In the end, all that matters are the paths we walk together, from the urban jungle of Atlanta, to a hawker centre in Singapore, to the streets of New York and the woods of Roanoke, to the alleyways of London and the wonder of discovering everything as if I were a new person, to Dublin, to Sligo, and back to London again.
We will meet again in the stars.
Thank you for reading this sentimental love letter. I’m a better person for having known Joe, and I think anybody who knows or knew either or both of us would agree with that. Right, now, I’m having a hard time, though, so I’m going to share a link to my GoFundMe. If you enjoy reading my stories, or if you only enjoyed reading this one, and you have even £5 to spare, please help me get my cats back so I can being my umpteenth new life, now near Glasgow, Scotland.
Three Twisted Knots 
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