A Tribute to Mea Culpa aka Tom du Barry

Born October 1th 1957- died of an heart attack on July 10th 2007

Mea's Favorite Quote:

"Never Say Never If You're Gonna Live Forever!"

This page is a tribute to a very dear friend of mine, a friend of everyone who knew him. I met him on Larian forum in 2002, he was the one who send me pm's with my spelling mistakes on forum, cause my englsih wasn't that great back then. I used to call him Mr. Smartypants.

Here you see a caricature of our dear friend

When it was my birthday he usually send me a mail with a bouquet of roses or a box of chocolates.

Mea was one of the funniest, wittiest guys on forum and everyone jsut loved him. Later on he became a member of Chaos Cascades too and made more friends there. He never mixed RL with the forum, so up till his death I never knew his real name.

You will see different ways of how his closest friends will remember Mea Culpa.

With this page, I hope no one will ever forget him

Wherever you are Mea, whatever you do, I hope you are happy and looking down on us while we still laugh with your jokes!

Ubereill's story

When I first joined Larian in the summer of 2004 I felt like I was on the threshold of going under. A year earlier I’d started the last part of Swedish elementary school, called the Gymnasium. I didn’t really get along with my class (I simply didn’t have the same interests or the same sense of humour) so during that first year I had become increasingly isolated. At the end of the first year I didn’t really speak to anyone at all. I felt extremely lonely and extremely sad.
That summer I bought a game called Divine Divinity, created by Larian studios. Occasionally I ran into sections I couldn’t get by without help. I tried to find a walkthrough, but the only help I could find online was the Larian forums. So I started lurking there, finding the answers I needed by reading other people’s posts. Members seemed to treat people well enough, and after a while I felt secure enough to create my own account and post my questions myself. At first I only thought about using the Divine Divinity forum (feeling a strange rush, since I was actually interacting with other people for the first time in over a year), but after a while I dared myself into the section of the forum called “chat”. At first I only checked out the RPG-chat but after a week or two I also dared myself into the ordinary chat.
When I first entered I made a highly jittery impression (fueled with my at the time highly flawed English skills), but the community there welcomed me with open arms (as far as I recall…) and I felt accepted, and even appreciated, for the first time in ages. The Larian board at this time was filled with wonderful people who helped make it a great place to be. The atmosphere was really warm and friendly, and everyone (well, I’m not counting trolls) felt welcome.
Mea was one of these persons. At first I didn’t really notice him because he kind of blended with the crowd because of all the other great people there at the time. The only thing I remember of him early on is that I used to think he was a girl because of his avatar… With time we started to interact more though, especially since Larian lost more and more members during that time, and I started to like him more and more. He was always nice and friendly no matter what and he never hesitated to help if he could. One thing that impressed me about him was that during the three years I knew him I never saw him angry. The closest to angry I saw him was in a discussion I had with him about Neverwinter Nights when I claimed there was no role-playing in the game…
Mea once said he didn’t see his internet friends as friends, but as acquaintances. People might look down on him for this, but I didn’t (maybe because I share his view. I see few people I meet online as friends and to be honest, Mea wasn’t one of them even though I liked him) because this shows that Mea didn’t only treat his friends well, he treated everyone well. Troy, a real life friend of Mea, said he was always joking and bringing joy to those around him, which doesn’t surprise me at all, because that’s what he was like online too. One of the best things you can say about people is that they affect people near them in a positive way, and Mea did this in the best of ways, as a spreader of joy. Because of this I thought the best way for us to remember him would be to post a joke he liked, and I found no better than this.

Posted repeatedly by Mea Culpa on various occasions, Two Trees:

Two tall trees, a birch and a beech, are growing in the woods. A small tree begins to grow between them, and the beech says to the birch, "Is that a son of a beech or a son of a birch?" The birch says he cannot tell.
Just then a woodpecker lands on the sapling. The birch says, "Woodpecker, you are a tree expert, Can you tell if that is a son of beech or a son of birch?" The woodpecker takes a taste of the small tree. He replies, "It is neither a son of beech nor a son of birch. It is, however, the best piece of ash I have ever put my pecker in."

This fairy was the last picture Mea gave me, the night before he died, I'll cherish it forever.

From ss

Give Me Your Flowers

I would rather have one little rose
From the garden of a friend,
Than to have the choicest flowers
When my stay on earth must end.
I would rather have a pleasant word
In kindness said to me,
Than flattery when my heart is still
And this life has ceased to be.
I would rather have a loving smile
From friends I know are true,
Than tears shed around my casket
When this world I bid adieu.
Bring me all the flowers today,
Whether pink, or white, or red;
I'd rather have one blossom now
Than a truckload when I'm dead.