Processing Loss

This is Allie. She has been my baby girl since shortly after we got her. I can’t tell you exactly how long we have had her because it legitimately seems like forever and wildly predates the time when I was keeping track of things through the blog. Best as we can tell she was somewhere between 13 and 16 years old because as a feral rescue, we have no real clue how old she was when we adopted her. She had a bit of a rocky start in our lives because we thought she was fighting some sort of kennel cough. The entire time we had her she would go into these sneezing fits, which we eventually came to realize were just brought on by allergies.

However this meant that we kept her isolated up in my wife’s office for a good chunk of time after we first got her. During this time I spent an awful lot of my free time hanging out in the office and just spending time with her so she wouldn’t be lonely. As a result we developed a pretty strong bond that continued on throughout her entire life. She had been sick for the last few years, realizing she had a thyroid condition too late to really be able to do much to fix it other than offer palliative care. Even when I knew she was not feeling amazing, she never stopped wanting to be on top of whatever I happened to be doing.

Long ago I had to learn how to play on my laptop while she was draped across me like a seat belt. We were legitimately surprised she made it through last winter, so as we entered this winter we were on constant watch. There were so many times she would be sleeping somewhere curled up and I would have to check on her to make sure she was okay. She remained “my” sweet and loving Allie right up until the end. Roughly and hour before recording the podcast last week, she had a massive seizure and within the span of ten minutes she was gone. My wife held her wrapped up in a towel as she passed.

I’ve not really been able to talk about this, because I am still processing. I knew it was coming which has helped, and Allie was a shadow of her former active self which has also helped me to realize it needed to happen. However no matter how much rationalize it… she was still my baby girl and one of the most loving cats that I have ever known. Talking about this sort of thing tends to spawn a deluge of support, and I am not sure if that helps. I mean I know you all at this point and I know you have my back, but I think this is just the sort of wound that needs to scab over a bit before I can move on with my life. The two remaining girls are adjusting and it has sort of reset the balance within the house causing a momentary truce which has helped.

It is also within this raw state that I am trying to process the news about the death of Brad McQuaid. I don’t have any personal stories about him, because I was just another player in a sea of players. However Everquest was a very important and foundational game for me, and with it came the legend of Brad McQuaid and the Vision. I also played quite a bit of Vanguard and was ultimately going to play some Pantheon. On some level I think Brad had this idea in his head that he never could quite reach and each time he set out with a game he failed somehow to render it quite the way he could see it in his minds eye. On many levels Vanguard felt like a higher fidelity version of Everquest and similarly so Pantheon was shaping to be the same higher fidelity version of Vanguard.

I am not sure if my life supports the style of play that these games were trying to present. However I still have a good respect for the ideas behind it. Brad was one of those folks that I looked up to and wanted to be when I was still entertaining the concept of making a break from corporate development and going into games. I am not even sure if he was a personal hero of mine, but he was definitely someone I kept tabs on each time he did anything. The world is going to feel smaller without him out there somewhere chipping away at trying to finally render this vision he had, in the same clarity he seemingly saw it in his minds eye.

On that note I am going to wrap up the post. I am knocked off balance right now between the sequence of events. I am sure I will be back to my normal self over the coming weeks, but for now I am just processing everything.