we are finally cowboys

At some point we will all experience the loss of something or someone that means more to us than even we knew. Two weeks ago one of the people who raised me, taught me, and watched me grow into the adult I am today passed away. I took a few days off of work and sort of shut myself off from most of the world because I was having trouble understanding anything. Even this far out, depending upon the day I’ll bounce between any number of unfocused, distorted states.

For me video games have almost always helped me deal with the world. And by that I don’t mean to say that I see them as some form of juvenile abnegation, just that they can help me take the time to process my thoughts and present me with complex situations that don’t always have easy answers. It’s therapeutic. They can be guiding, comforting, and I have found myself over the past two weeks seeking a certain kind of transcendent peace in them. I know that dealing with loss by way of playing a game seems silly to a lot of people, but for those of us that truly believe in this medium, and for those of us that have enough fluency to know where to look for those kernels of truth that we need in the dark times… There’s nothing I’d rather have by my side.

For years… and I mean… the better part of the last decade Majora’s Mask has been my favorite game. Time and time again people ask me why, they’ll say that Ocarina or A Link to the Past is better, or that the game isn’t “fun”. Hell, I’ll even happily cede a few points, namely because the HUD really crowds the screen and that a good chunk of the game can be really tedious. I realize these things, but for me it’s become almost like a bible. No matter what I’m facing, no matter what else is going on in life I can find some wonderful piece of wisdom in Termina.

Games like Majora’s Mask seem naturally a bit better at helping me think because they alternate between intense, emotionally dense moments and long stretches of puzzle-solving and exploration. The quiet, for me anyway, provides time for reflection and introspection – it lets the game break away from action-heavy titles that never give the player any sort of downtime.

I’m far from the first person to look perhaps a little too far into the symbolism apparently layered into the game, but it’s an observation that seems self-reinforcing. Each time I come back to the now 13-year-old game I’m amazed by the number of new things I find.

She was diagnosed with cancer over two years ago. When they found it, the tumor was already classified as Stage 3. At the time I thought of her as one of the constants in my life. Someone with the sort of unbreakable spirit that can’t… weaken or fade. Someone that must be invincible for no other reason than you simply can’t imagine what life would be like without them.

I had my first breakdown then. That night. Sometime around 4am. I’d been drinking, of course, but even then I just couldn’t begin to understand how or why something so horrible could be happening to a woman that didn’t deserve it. The feeling wasn’t anything new, but I’d slipped back into childhood. I demanded that the world be fair.

Denial.

She lived. I mean really lived. Occasionally I’ll let myself slip into cynicism, into anger and hatred. It’s easy for me to get frustrated at the thin veneer of artificiality that seems to permeate our modern world. Small Talk. Fashion. Pop… anything. These don’t mean anything, but entire conversations, relationships are governed by them.

She didn’t believe in small talk. Every conversation was an investment. Every word meant something. She had thyroid cancer, and after a time she had to have her larynx removed. Replaced with an artifice. Speaking took work. She struggled and agonized over every syllable, because if she was going to say something, it had better be damned important. It had better mean something.

Anger.

No one really wants to give up or cede anything. We often take great lengths to avoid it. People want what they want. It’s still hard for me to really grasp that she’s gone. I can’t even comprehend how or why, or what I’m going to do now.

The past few days I’ve found myself arguing about the best way to honor her. She had so many things she wanted me to do, so many things she wanted me to be. My culture, which is to say American Indian customs, have all but faded. She wanted me to take her place, in some capacity, and be a medicine man. It’s not something I’ve wanted to be in years, and I can’t help but feel like my refusal to answer that call is, in a way contributing the slow, gradual death of the memory of my ancestors. I keep finding works, projects I can take on that rest somewhere between what I want and what she saw me becoming.

Bargaining.

That’s as far as I’ve gotten so far. I’m stuck here, trying to figure out what my next steps are, what my next move will be. Every now and then I’ll move back to denial or anger; perhaps briefly touching on depression. This isn’t linear. And neither is Termina.

A few years back I wrote a small piece about how Majora’s Mask, to me, is about healing, about renewal and moving forward. These days I find that message mixed with the inherent struggle in recovery. In the game, I must reset time at least once every few hours. In essence, I begin the game over again and again and again. I keep starting over, coming back to the same wounds and witnessing the same tragedies I did before. Each time I come back stronger, and I can tackle different pieces of the game that I couldn’t before; even so, I keep regressing, slowly building my strength, my resilience and recovering a little more with each repetition. Eventually… after dozens of resets, after flipping through the five stages of grief countless time, I’m strong enough. I’m strong enough to strike at the source of the grief, to solve the problem and heal myself.