It’s been hard to try to gather my thoughts and feelings about his passing to put them in words.
My first thoughts still go towards not having been able to travel in November. It makes me think how we consider life to be a natural state, a guaranteed constant for any future plans. I feel I’ve missed out and underestimated the fight Clif had been on for the past almost two years, and how lucky we were to still have him among us.
And then I can’t help but think of how much Clif has impacted in my own life. I started playing Populous in the roughest years of my life. Clif, Raymond and Sunny took me under their wings and taught me how to play. I was no more than a ‘Spaniard’, a newbie who was absolutely terrible at the game, and an easy target for many other members.
Clif had a very particular way of conversing with me, that I’m sure applies to others too. The matchmaker alert would go off with a ‘Hi’. He would try to make sense when my English wasn’t good, and he would ask me how I was doing in life, and remember about our previous days’ conversation.
Now this might be a silly routine that we all had, but for a 19 years old person on the other side of the world, trying to work out how life works the hard way, his conversations and advice meant the world.
And so it is to him that I owe the ripple effect of small decisions he had encouraged me to make. Do you want to live elsewhere? Well what’s stopping you? – Do you feel you need a change? Well that’s your own sense of evolution, listen to it. – Do you feel this is not real life?
And in that question I will stop. Because he made it a point, all along in the years I’ve known him, that there is nothing in life that is not real. This is real life. A game, a community, the empathy and closeness you feel with someone who you’ve only ever read words from; this is in our lives and this is real.
And what’s going on behind the screen to someone who needs an ear is real. And what’s happening to them that causes them to act awkwardly and misbehave is real. And what caused a stirrup in the community that we lead is real and all we can look forward to is a solution. Together, all on the same boat, going towards the same direction.
That was a goddamn massive lesson on how to live life. That had me shaking off my fears for the unknown and meeting people that I would let very close to my heart. That had me merging my heart with one of them and changing my life forever, in a way that I would not have ever considered possible if it weren’t because of his advice.
He was and will forever be in our memory an amazing person. Yes he was one of those that you think to yourself you’re so lucky your paths have crossed. At a personal level, I could probably go on forever, but I would like to end with his reflection that everything that happens to our lives is real – in front of and behind the screen.
It crushes me to think I didn’t get to meet him in person, and I will be forever grateful for his presence in my life.
