I won't insult you by saying I know exactly how you feel, but I will say that what you've described has been on my mind about two good friends in Furry Fandom I'd known for quite a few years- and I believe you knew them on TapestriesMUCK as well, if not elsewhere- with a similar feeling of helplessness, or at least a lack of clarity on my part.

Brone, a very excellent and personable cat-behemoth and friend going back to my early days on Tapestries, passed away very suddenly and not long ago. I believe a mutual friend told me it was a stroke, or complications resulting from or surrounding his person having one. There was no reaction time, just a sudden, inescapable plunge of belief, until it sank in that I would never see him again in life. I didn't know how to process that; being as recent as his passing was, I still haven't processed half of it. I've accepted that he won't be there now ever again when I log on and head into Fox Plaza, not in person. I need more time to find for myself what his shape will be within me now, aside from my excellent memories of the deeply kind and feeling person he was and finessed through his IC self every time we met, and that I will never let fade within me, as long as I'm able to make the choice.

I know when my Da passed on in July of 2006- we were very close- there was, even once we knew there was nothing more modern medicine could do for him, a certain degree of acceptance of what would come, not that we liked it, but there was a defined shape to it. Da never once in my memory or presence for the last eight months, from the final, last-ditch surgery in November of 2005, to his last morning waking on July 6th of 2006, a Sunday, had any complaints, nor if he had any regrets that he voiced them in my presence. He, and we, had ample time to say goodbye to him, and as importantly share what time remained with each other; my Mum, my two older brothers and I, my heart-sisters, and my young nephew, my oldest brother's son, who shared his grandfather's birthday; different year, of course.

But there was a reaction time, whether or not we treated it as a countdown, a terminus approaching. We could see its shape, and my Da's shape, and I'm sure he saw it too and did not grieve it. He never treated life as a race, as if living ten or twenty years longer was a struggle and a 'win', and the sooner truncation and life-extinct was some variety of personal failure or carelessness. He taught me that by example, by relishing life, and in fairness his passing and the times we shared leading up to the day he died and his decession helped me learn to cherish existence, that it was not a race, at least not with anyone but yourself. He taught me how not to forget others, and the importance of being ourselves, the best ourself I could be.

That reaction time, however its format took shape, was enough to at least springboard a healthy grieving. Brone's passing was so sudden, its purpose immediate and fatal, that without that reaction time it wasn't even a matter of grief and grieving, but belief and believing. I still grieved his loss, and remembered him as he was, but in having to rely on the basic instinct of shock of loss, rather than preparation and cogent understanding of what had come, I had to learn how to grieve in a different manner.

I don't know if I knew him here on FurAffinity or on a place like F-List; he never mentioned having an account here that I know of, but I may be entirely wrong and he did have a place and page of his own here on FA. I only ever knew him on Tapestries, so I think I have set his shape, meshed with my memory of him and his excellent person, in the format he was there within me.

-2Paw.

There's a line at the end of a spoken-word performance piece I really like that really hits for me with all this.

"Now I've never been one to hope that Elvis is still hanging around somewhere, hiding... but I will probably always expect to see [him]... reappear. Someday."

I think you should take screenshots of his pages and save all of his art. It might be hard, seeing the reminders of him, but it would be worth it. I know this website has been around for a long time, but you never know when it could get hacked and disappear.