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| Eelco by Fee |
Uru closed in February 2004 and Eelco encouraged me to try other virtual worlds like There and Second Life. I didn't like There, but I immediately saw the potential in Second Life but it took me a year of talking on Skype to persuade Eelco to try it. He joined me on Valentine's day 2005, and we didn't look back - since then we have talked daily, often multiple times a day, by skype and through SL, or in person.
We became SL partners in October 2005, and agreed that if we were still together in six months, we would exchange photographs and then arrange to meet in the real world. By then we were working on SL projects together, and meeting up was a necessity. We never made a lot of money from our work in Second Life, but we had interesting times together as a result.
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| Hugs in Second Life |
In real life, Eelco was a senior software architect. I learned not to interrupt him when he was juggling code in his head, and he learned not to talk to me when I was putting thoughts into an article or writing something I'd woken up with. Although there was a 13 year age gap (I'm the older) and we were quite different in background and taste, we shared the same view on the world, and the same sense of humour. He made me laugh and was always a bit miffed if I didn't hear the sarcasm in something he said and took it literally rather than finding him funny. Sometimes I was deliberately obtuse and took him literally despite knowing he was joking and I regret that now. He always said that he was much funnier in Dutch, but I failed to learn Dutch while he was still alive, as his English was so good he was sometimes mistaken for an Englishman by English people. He was proud of that, and I take some credit for it, as talking multiple times a day did have an effect on both vocabulary and pronunciation.
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| The amazing Ajax Arena build Oclee made in SL |
He made some fantastic things in Second Life. We had an ongoing joke that he was an anal crafter of things with pinpoint accuracy while I was a bodger who often misaligned prims and refused to use anything remotely resembling a calculation to line things up. Consequently, I learned to be more accurate and he learned that when making a Tudor cottage, bodging makes for a more realistic, not less realistic finish. I like to think that we changed each other willingly for the better.
We first met up in real life in 2006, and found that it was as though we'd known each other for years. Some people have talked about meeting people from virtual worlds and getting a shock when the real-life person was very different from their online persona. We had the opposite shock, finding that we dovetailed together very comfortably.
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| Oclee's Roman Amphitheatre |
In 2010 I left my husband after years of living separate lives in the same house, and Eelco and I became RL partners, although still living in different countries. He came and spent weeks at a time with me, and we found joy in each other's company, whatever we were doing. I used to visit him in Rotterdam and he visited me in England, but when I was forced to move north to Lincolnshire, it was always him who visited me, partly because he preferred to come to Lincolnshire and take long walks in the countryside and sleep soundly through the night.
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| Wandering the countryside |
When I got a dog, ostensibly to make me take more exercise, he fell in love with her, and was even more enthusiastic to join me and take Tizzy for long walks in the countryside first thing in the morning. I thought he'd find the chaos of my house - full of crafting materials, books and charity shop finds - oppressive and irritating, as it is very different from the calm and minimalist surroundings he was used to in his bachelor flat, but he relaxed when he spent time with us, and fitted easily into family life with my grown-up children and dog.
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| In York in 2017 |
When we weren't together in real life, we spoke several times a day on skype, and usually spent our evenings together until he went early to bed in an attempt to get some good quality sleep. The last time he came to stay with me he slept a full night and then took long naps in the day, and he apologized for spending so much of our time together asleep. I just thought he was tired because he hadn't been sleeping, it didn't occur to me that it was a sign that something was wrong. I do think that now.
I loved him dearly, and every day I spent with him was better than a day without him. We argued from time to time, and it was as though the light had gone out on my world, until we made up and the light came back again. Now, that light is extinguished and I am trying so hard to celebrate the things that we did together, the time we had together and the love we shared together, but it is very very hard to ignore the gaping hole in my life that used to be filled with love and laughter and this feeling that whatever happened I had a sanctuary and a home in our relationship - even when he was in the Netherlands and I was in England. It transcended our physical separation and the differences we had.
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| At home, working on something, oblivious to the camera trained on him |
I can't say much about his professional life - I know he was a very unusual programmer who continuously updated his knowledge, learned new things, kept abreast of anything new in his industry, and that he made and architected programs which are in use today. I know he had ideas of how to improve things, and made innovations which solved problems, and was constantly creative in his approach to challenges in his work. He shared knowledge too.
I can't say much about his family life, as I only met his parents for a few minutes some years ago, although I have now met his family after his death. I don't know why he kept us entirely separate.
I can say that he was the most loving, intelligent, funny, generous, creative and interesting person I have ever met, and years of talking to him and finding out about his inner life had not exhausted my desire to know him inside and out. I wasn't ready to let him go, and I don't believe he was ready to go. One minute he was there, and the next he was not. Let this be a lesson to you not to take the people in your life for granted. You may not have more time, another day, another meeting.
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| Eelco on Steep Hill in Lincoln |
I've obsessively collected together all the video and photographs I have of him, and watch the same videos over and over. Unfortunately, my dog, his beloved princess, is the main focus of many of the videos, with tantalizing glimpses of him visible but not lingered upon. The video I think shows him doing what he most loved to do when he was with me, is of him walking the fields around my home with the dog in the early evening, but that's too big for blogger. I like to think of him wandering off into the sunset where I hope to join him in due course. He was dear to me, and he's gone and at the moment I can only mourn him, but I hope to move into the possibility of celebration in due course.
I'm going to end with what I said at his funeral, because it was heartfelt and said what I wanted to express while I was still numb with shock over his unexpected death:
"Eelco and I met in an experimental virtual game about 15 years ago. We were both fans of Cyan games and that’s what brought us together. From the very beginning of our partnership although we were very different and were living far apart in different countries, we felt like two puzzle pieces which fitted together to make one whole.
"We both often agreed that had we met in the real world
somewhere, we would probably not have looked at each other or developed a
friendship. There was a difference in
age and we had very different backgrounds and experiences. Everything about us was different – our taste
in art and furniture, films and music – but when we met it simply felt right. He became the love of my life. To me he was the most handsome, clever,
funny, generous, kind, thoughtful, creative, interesting person in the
world. Although he could be a bit grumpy
and sad when we were apart, when we were together our world came into focus and
we were happy just to be together.
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| Breaking bad outfits to tackle wet insulation |
"He loved and supported me in so many ways that thinking
about his loss to write this about him is the most painful thing I have ever
done. Eelco was my crazy Dutchman –
passionate, intelligent, funny, a wonderful cook, an interesting and
knowledgeable companion. He made me feel
safe, loved and beautiful. Our differences could be challenging but also
exciting.
"He could be explosive in his opinions if things weren’t the
way he thought they should be – he was a perfectionist and always wanted the
world to be working to his standard of perfection. He became frustrated when other people,
including me, thought good enough was good enough.
"But he held himself to a higher standard of perfection than
he imposed on the rest of the world and I often used to say to him that although
he probably could do whatever it was better than anyone, he didn’t have time to
do everything.
"We worked together with a team of doctors in the virtual
world of Second Life, developing projects for a variety of different
areas. Eelco worked so hard on these
projects and was always dissatisfied with anything less than perfection.
"We were often apart for long periods of time and sometimes
that was a painful thing to learn to overcome, but we talked to each other
several times a day and often remarked that we probably knew more about each
other than many people who live together all the time.
"Eelco was my best friend, my lover, my partner and my adored
companion and it was typical of him that when I faced challenges earlier this
year he was an unfailing support to me and my family. He worked incredibly hard, helping to prepare
a room for my mother to come out of hospital and at the same time preparing
food, looking after my brothers and sisters, buying supplies and thinking
always one step ahead.
"When she died he came and supported me again, nearly making
me late for my own mother’s funeral because he wanted his suit altered to be a
perfect fit.
"Although we hadn’t been able to be together as much this
year as we had previously, I know it was only because he had such love for all
the people in his life, and he wanted to support them all, not because he
didn’t want to be with me. He was
constantly pulled in different directions by that love for us all, wanting to
be a perfect support for everyone he loved.
"In the last few years, anyone who met him would know that he
had a new love in his life. My dog Tizzy
was a present from my mother intended to make me take more exercise but the
moment Tizzy saw Eelco and he saw her it was love at first sight. He called her his princess and she could not
be separated from him when he was with me in the UK.
"The feeling was definitely mutual and he loved to take her
on long rambles in the woods and early morning walks across the fields and when
he had to leave to return to his family and life in the Netherlands Tizzy would
find the jacket Eelco wore when he took her for walks and drag it around the
house with her.
"She watched for his return and seemed to know when he was
coming back. She was beside herself with
joy when he returned.
"My grown-up children Alistair, Thomas and Kate came to love
Eelco deeply and are as bereft as I am at his loss. My daughter said she simply loved him as part of me, she didn’t see him as separate.
"Eelco never tried to be another parent to them but he earned
a unique place as a magical combination of father, brother and friend rolled
into one, sharing his diverse loves of firefly, 3D printing, history, cooking,
art and design with them. They all
benefitted enormously from knowing him and he leaves a gaping chasm in all our
lives having been taken away so cruelly early.
My family love him and I love him. He was irrepressible, irreplaceable and I
don’t know what I shall do without him."
I don't think I can end with anything better than a video of him tramping the fields with his princess at his side.
