For Sara

Sara Stump was from Akron, Ohio. On my forum she was Glitzymakeupgirly. But I knew her first from The Sims Online, where she was Sarasim and I was Maury.

A house next door

We both ran our own little places on the Test Center server, which I am pretty sure we both ended up on for the same unglamorous reason: it handed you thirty thousand simoleans to start, and that was a lot of house. We got to know each other building things next door to one another, and eventually we did the very Sims Online thing of getting married in the game.

But the game was really just where we met. The friendship lived on Yahoo Messenger, for years. She was in school at the time and working a day job, as a secretary at a law firm, doing both at once. We talked about music and life, about our plans and the things we wanted, about schoolwork and family and our pets, our small troubles and our small wins. Ordinary young-adult stuff, the kind that feels enormous while you are in it.

Late nights on the webcam

What I did not appreciate then was how rare it all was. In those early days, voice chat and webcams were not a given, and we had both. So a lot of our nights were spent actually seeing and hearing each other, her in her purple and pink room, sometimes dragging her desk to a new corner just for a different view, the camera swinging around with it. We would talk for hours. Sometimes we would put on music and sing to each other, which is a thing you can really only do with someone you are completely comfortable with.

She loved cats, same as me, right down to a little one of her own named Zoe. That alone probably bought us an extra year of conversation.

The songs she gave me

Sara handed me music I never would have found on my own, well outside my usual rotation of European dance tracks. She is the reason I know “Home” by Daughtry, the one that goes “I’m going home, to the place where I belong.” And she is the reason I know Shania Twain’s “From This Moment On”:

From this moment, life has begun. From this moment, you are the one. Right beside you is where I belong, From this moment on.

Almost twenty years later, I still remember most of the words. I do not think that is an accident. Some songs stay with you because of the song, and some stay because of who played them for you.

Where she was headed

Her mom taught piano. She had a younger sister, Lexi, close to my age, who was all about the things sisters tease each other over and love each other for: makeup, shopping, the works. Sara graduated and became a preschool teacher, which fit her exactly. She was kind in a way that is hard to describe without sounding like I am overselling it, so I will just say it plainly: I do not think there was a mean bone in her body. She did not complain. She was full of life, and full of love.

Around the time I was finishing high school and she was finishing school herself, The Sims Online started winding down, and the two of us drifted the way you do. But we never fully lost touch. In the last couple of years, she told me she had met someone, someone she was starting to fall for, and that maybe it was going somewhere. I only ever cheered that on. We were still so young. Anything could have happened.

Losing her

She passed away suddenly in the summer of 2007. I heard it from Maggie, a mutual friend from the game. I was at my first corporate job by then, and I mostly remember walking around the office in a fog, unable to make it feel real.

I wrote a few words on the forum at the time, because I did not know what else to do: “I’m still confused about all this, but DragonSiblings has lost a member. There is no official response. I will miss her very much, I know now she is in a better place though. Please take a moment for a lost DragonSibling.”

It was a brutal stretch. Vanessa passed only weeks later, that same summer. Two friends from the same corner of the early internet, gone within a couple of months of each other, both far too young.

What I still wonder

I think about where we would be now. Would we have stayed close? Would she be cheering me on, would I be cheering her on, the way we always did? Would we ever have met in person? I do not know. I have reached out to her sister on Facebook once or twice over the years, and it has never connected, which I understand completely. Maybe she does not remember me, or maybe she would rather not go back to that summer. Either way is fair.

So I will do the one thing I can. I will write it down, so it sits somewhere permanent: there was a person named Sara, who went by Glitzymakeupgirly, who was kind and strong and wonderful, and who was taken from this earth far too early. This is for her family, for her friends, and for her. If there is anything after all of this, I hope we get to meet in person one day, and catch up on all the years in between.

Sara, Sarasim, Glitzy: I still think about you, and I am grateful I got to know you. Rest easy.