- Knuc U Kinte
- Aug 17, 2004
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A few days before my dad died in August, I got the call I'd been dreading from my mother. She told me it was time to come home for my dad's last days. I live in California, and they live in Alabama. I packed up my PS4, super slim PS3 and PS Vita—alas, my desktop PC was too big—and made the journey.
I'd never experienced a death this close to me before, and I had no idea how to handle it. But it was a safe bet that "handling it" was going to involve playing some games, and so I was going to make sure I had as many as possible at my disposal.
There's no right or wrong way to grieve, people say. "Everyone has to grieve in their own way!" they yell into our abyss of sadness. Most of the people who tried to impart that bit of popular wisdom didn't know how I was planning to grieve.
Contrary to what I was told, there absolutely is a wrong way to grieve. I could have disappeared down some bottles of liquor. My dad's mother took her grief out on my mom; I'm pretty sure that counts as a "wrong way to grieve," considering it made everybody else somehow feel even shittier than we already did.
My official grieving process began before my dad died. I spent three-and-a-half days in the hospice before he passed, but after he stopped being coherent. We sat with him, held his hand, talked to him, but he seemed more like a broken automaton than a human being most of the time.
There isn't much to do in a hospice, of course, and we happened to be at a hospice in a small town in rural Alabama. There weren't many places nearby, like a movie theater, that might have given me a reason to leave that death hospital for a brief respite. Instead, I sipped on whiskey —enough to untangle my nerves a bit but not enough to get smashed—wrapped myself in a blanket in a pretty OK recliner, and played Danganronpa 2 on my Vita.
Danganronpa 2 is a visual novel. It doesn't require a ton of overt energy to play, which was ideal. Its story and themes were strangely appropriate for what was happening in my life. It's a game about death and despair, as a bunch of high school kids are trapped on a tropical island, and if any of them wants to leave they must kill one of their friends and then pin it on another student.
Danganronpa 2's subtitle is "Goodbye Despair." It's story is about holding onto hope through dark times. Our hero character is struggling to have faith that he and his friends will be able to persevere and survive through it all, as they fall one by one around him—this was obviously something I could relate to and draw strength from as I, severely depressed as I am on a good day, sat in that chair waiting for my dad to die.
Sorry about your dad, dude.
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Nov 28, 2014 22:12
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Apr 28, 2024 06:06
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- Knuc U Kinte
- Aug 17, 2004
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if you don't hate anime tits then you are Part Of The Problem
the pedophile problem
If you can't stroke your dick to completion @ big hooting anime knockers then you are gay.
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Nov 29, 2014 08:31
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Nov 28, 2014 22:12
