To be perfectly honest, I had no idea who she was or how famous she was in the SecondLife community. I didn’t even know she made clothes. A few days later, I just casually mentioned to another friend that I had met Eshi, and the response was full of the kind of fannish fawning that probably is a big factor in Eshi’s eventual discorporation. But I never knew her as “THE Eshi Otawara;” to me, she was just Eshi, a person on my friends list. Only later did I realize that she really was a big deal, like when I invited her over to a small party only to have Pathfinder Linden show up and spend the evening in my virtual home.

The first time I met Irena Morris in real life, she threw her arms around me and hugged me. By contrast to our first meeting in SL, our RL meeting at SLCC ’08 was a very good time for me; a few weeks earlier, I had met another SL friend for the first time in RL, and we were on our way to becoming partners in both worlds. I still remember Eshi’s beautiful smile, sitting at a table under an umbrella on the hotel grounds in Tampa. I only knew her from SL at the time; I didn’t know a lot of her back-story; the tragedy of losing her husband, the resulting problems with her residency status, the struggle to make a full-time living in SecondLife, these were all things that were hinted at but never a the focus of our conversations in SecondLife.

I won’t say that I knew Eshi well, and I can’t yet say that I know Irena well, but I’m honored to have known Eshi while she was active in the metaverse, and I’m certainly glad that I know Irena, whom I consider a good friend. I’ll miss Eshi in SecondLife; It may take a while for me to be able to wear the clothes that she’s made again. I understand why she’s chosen to leave SecondLife now; it’s not what I would have done, but I’m not Eshi. We all have to choose the path that we take as we muddle through these worlds we’ve made. I wish her the best, and hope that our paths cross again.