Mourning My Friend Through Final Fantasy 7

thegamer.com:

I know the title of this article is ridiculous, but stick with me here. When I heard from someone that my friend Sara died, I did what everyone does in this stupid sci-fi future world: I texted her and, when that failed, I checked on social media. After seeing a few posts here or there, I finally found an obituary and confirmation from a family member. She had died a few days before I even heard.

In fact, on the day she died, I had sent her a Wario meme and she had never responded.

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Since the message had gone blue in iMessage, I thought it was because she was busy or, more likely, it wasn’t a very good meme. We had sent each other video game memes over the years, but responding to them was never a big priority. We lived across the country and she had been going through a rough health crisis while the rest of the Earth was going through an entirely different rough health crisis.

I had known for a while that she hadn’t been doing well, but as her health got worse and she was forced to move back in with her parents, our friendship lightly fizzled. There was no falling out. We’d still text and talk about Nier and Final Fantasy news, but she wasn’t really capable of having very long conversations. I tried buying her Dragon Quest 11 to cheer her up, but she found the positivity of the game depressing. What I wasn’t thinking was that a good friend wasn’t going to exist in less than two years.

Which, I know, is normal.

We all lose friends and family and co-workers and colleagues and mentors and idols without expecting it.

But that doesn’t make those deaths any easier. It doesn’t fill in the deep hole of sadness left behind. And it doesn’t cut the years of connections you