In case you hadn’t noticed, we are still in the throes of a global pandemic. I began teleworking at the beginning of COVID-19 isolation, and am still working from home on a part-time basis some 20 months later. COVID-19 is a terrible virus and has altered our reality to a new version of normal.

Talk about slippery stones!

I have been fortunate. With one exception, any friends or family who were affected by the virus suffered only mild cases and did not require hospitalization. That single exception, however, was frighteningly real. Thankfully, my friend is home now and recovering from a close brush with mortality. I have the deepest of gratitude for the medical team at New Mexico University Hospital who made her one of their miracles.

But for all its horror, I found a silver lining in this epidemic. I came home from work on March 13, 2020 and spent the next 13 months with Faith, in close quarters almost constantly, as I worked from home and we were quarantined from the rest of the world. To some this might sound like too much! But it was the nature of our relationship that we enjoyed spending time together more than anything else in the world. Without COVID, I would have been away from home 12 hours a day, 9 days over every two weeks. Instead I was so fortunate to have spent that precious time in Faith’s presence.

We talked, we cooked, we watched television and movies, we assembled jigsaw puzzles, we became far too familiar with the restaurants and menus on DoorDash and UberEats, we befriended our Wal-Mart delivery lady… and we played games.

One game in particular, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, released on March 20, 2020, a mere seven days after quarantine began here in New Mexico. It’s a lovely game if you aren’t familiar, played on the Nintendo Switch gaming system. In the game you create a character, an avatar as it were, who moves to an island with anthropomorphic animals as friends, neighbors, vendors and visitors. Each island begins rustic and empty, but the possibilities are only limited by the imagination of the player. And best of all? You can visit other islands, created and decorated by other players anywhere in the world. My most notable visit was to the island of a lovely young woman in The Netherlands, but we were also so happy to spend time playing with my great-niece halfway across this country. Animal Crossing: New Horizons was a lifesaver and a social outlet for many people who were otherwise alone.

Faith and I spent many hours playing together, visiting each other’s islands, decorating, fishing, catching bugs, watering flowers and wishing on shooting stars. The memories of that time are precious to me, though I have set the game aside for now. It just isn’t the same playing alone.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is still with me, however, and will always be a part of me; quite literally, in fact!

Only days after Faith passed away, I was introduced to a wonderful and tragic group of women on Facebook, all of whom had lost their own wives and partners. This group is filled with wonderful, supportive, compassionate, wise, and sometimes funny women. Their support over the past seven months has been priceless and I have gained a number of dear friends. But while I was still new to the group, someone posted a question: “Have you ever considered getting a memorial tattoo?”

Until that moment, I would have sworn I would never decorate my body in such a permanent fashion. Why do anything that you might regret down the road? But from that moment on, I could not get the idea out of my head. I started planning my first tattoo.

On one of the Animal Crossing Facebook groups where I was a member, a young woman had offered her services as a tattoo artist, designing patterns based on the game itself. I contacted her and told her what I wanted and why, and she sent me a lovely design depicting two butterflies recognizable from the game. With this design in hand, I went to a local tattoo shop to schedule the actual work.

I had plenty of time to think about it, more than a month as it happened. I wanted to get my tattoo on our anniversary, the day on which we would have, should have celebrated 25 years together, and so I requested an appointment for that date. As the day drew near, I almost backed out, convincing myself to downsize to something smaller and unobtrusive.

On the day before my appointment, however, I was standing out in the back yard as the dogs went about their business. Little white common butterflies had been profuse so far over the summer, and I would often see two or more at a time dancing together. But on this day, as I watched the white butterflies, a monarch flew into the yard: the other butterfly in my commissioned design. It was the first and indeed the only time I saw the common butterfly and the monarch in the yard together. And I knew in my heart Faith was telling me: “If you’re going to get a tattoo, you’d better make it a pretty one!”

And so, on July 20, 2021, I visited Elexis at Porter House Ink in Las Cruces, NM and came home with this:

The butterflies are significant, and not only for their presence in our game. If you knew Faith, then you would know of her love for these fragile creatures and the wonder of their transformation from caterpillar to chrysalis to beautiful butterfly.

I have not regretted my tattoo for even a moment. I have been told since by friends that these body decorations are addictive, and indeed I have already made plans for my next one, as I document my journey down this stream of life.

Ah, but that is a story for another day.