Loss

I have always had a morbid obsession with my own passing. Staring out of a bus window I would imagine in great detail the very second my life would end, and it would leave me gasping with anxiety and the sense I had glimpsed into an abyss. I am terrified of that inevitable moment and have spent the last year being reminded it is closer every day.

The news that Ryan Davis of Giant Bomb had died suddenly, at age 34, and mere days after marrying the love of his life hit me like a ton of brinks, inexplicably. The loss of a complete stranger to me, a man I once stood five feet from and didn’t have the courage to introduce myself, broke me emotionally. Earlier in the week I learned that my mother, who lives on the other side of the country, is no longer suffering the delayed effects of multiple severe head traumas as originally told, but is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. Having watched her father die from this hideous disease as a skeleton of a man; drooling, incontinent and unrecognizable, I am now in the horrible position of wishing my mother would die early, so I can remember her as she is, not as a shadow.

My wife held me as we both wept, sleeping in the basement as my father tended to my mother upstairs in our bedroom. My parents and I walked the dog the next morning and mom was clear and aware. I would learn later this was the same day Ryan died.

After they left to continue what would likely be my mother’s last road trip, my wife and I made desperate plans to continue cycling our debt to enable at least one of us to visit them every three months or so. Debt is a massive cause of stress in my life and I have no ability to manage stress, only suppress it. Our debt often seems insurmountable.

Our 4 year old domestic car was (wrongly) diagnosed with a dying water pump, covered under warranty. The correct diagnosis was the un-warranted alternator, a round-trip ticket worth of repairs.

I made the mistake of watching the horrid Man of Steel to distract from the reality of my mother’s illness, and sobbed at a poorly told tale of mother and adopted sons.

We struggled with my step-son and his self-contempt and inability to connect with education or other people.

The morning of July 8^th it was revealed that Ryan Davis was gone. He had died at home on July 3. Dozens of eulogies sprung up with moving statements of love. The entire gaming community seemed to grieve as a one, for a face and voice that had been ingrained into our lives for years. His public persona seemed as close to his private persona as it could be. He seemed both quick to anger but quick to laugh. He loved his work and worked hard at loving life. Photos and video of the raucous occasion of his wedding had been posted only days before. It was incomprehensible this larger than life man who appeared to have life by the balls would be taken so suddenly and without warning.

I sobbed uncontrollably against the kitchen counter, with a deep ache in my chest. I envied and admired Ryan, as I do so many. I struggle with depression and self-loathing. Somewhere along the near decade of my relationship and pressures of raising kids I lost the ability to have fun. I lost joy. I live vicariously through the lives of those I admire, most often through podcasts, it seems. I often fall asleep, soothed by the sounds of conversation, of voices engaged with each other in a way that is sorely lacking in my own disconnected life.

The reality that I can no longer hide or deny neither my mortality nor that of those around me is sobering. Death has permeated all of my interactions online and off in the last year and I find myself feeling terrified and alone, crying in the dark. I contain and crush down my emotions, bottling them up until I can hold no more. I am struggling to find balance in the understanding that loss from this point forward will be an ever growing companion.

My grief is complicated and messy, partially containing the loss of an admired personality along with the extended and horrible future that awaits my mother. I look to my own life and find it lacking with little to no idea how to fill it. I am depressed and genuinely sad, and often filled with regret.

I work the tools therapy has given me to try and control the depression. I have started my mornings by reading aloud a post-it that has a simple phrase and I try to believe it. My wife called me on my bullshit the first time when directly after looking into my own eyes and stating “I accept myself completely right now” I turned to her and said “I hate looking at myself”.

So I said it again and bit back a self-attack waiting at the tip of my tongue.

The Giant Bomb team assembled a podcast that I believe will mark the moment they recognized their work and their lives would never be the same. They aired their very personal grief and struggles with moving on and they opened their hearts to remember their friend.

This past week has been a forced march into the next stage of adulthood, where death is no longer the ephemeral impossibility of youth, but something to be expected and planned for. It will make re-finding joy more difficult. I tell my wife at every parting I love her and am grateful for her, because it could at any time be the last. I am trying to be more grateful for friends and family. I am trying not to hate myself.

I am trying not to be afraid.