thank you for those thoughtful comments. The initial story was terribly depressing but my wife called me out on it and gave me a framework to work from (she's a trained counsellor and works with a bereavement charity). Luckily we listened to her and adopted a more hopeful approach where the void never goes away but it can be managed and overcome by personal growth.
I think the 3D performance is much better in 4.3 - we are using the dev preview and the web builds are certainly much better than older versions.
Your request about subtitles is 100% correct. I have a subtitle system I built that works for short sentences but nothing that can handle long monologues of the kind we used this jam. Something for me to sort for next time. Thanks again.