***warning, spoilers ahead!***
Life has had a funny way of putting me in places where death happens. It doesn’t happen much anymore, maybe in the last 8 years meeting the love of my life gave me something to live for that put me farther away from death as is characterized as a personality, or as a force, or as an element by giving me something more to live for.
However, a decade ago I was traveling around the country with nothing but a guitar, mostly by bus: sometimes alone, sometimes with friends. And more often than not, I would end up living in a house or sleeping on a couch for short terms with people who were experiencing proximity to death in some way. Maybe their significant other had passed away, maybe they were sitting with a family member during their last days, or maybe they themselves were taking stock of the life lived and putting measures in order before it was time to move on. At first it was a solemn, “kind” sort of “luck” that would bring me to these places, to these people, to see the ways that kindness plays out at the end of a lifelong journey. Eventually, though, I would receive the invitations: Could you come to Arizona? We need a song written for a funeral. Could you come to Ohio? I miss the sound of her name. Could you come to California? I have some thoughts I want recorded before I go. It was usually very heavy work, with a big mix of emotions, and perhaps work I was not qualified to do. I would do it, though, because it provided food and a place to stay for weeks at a time when my life wouldn’t otherwise afford those things.
Last Warning For Spoilers
I was not prepared for how much I would remember the ways these experiences made me feel when I started playing a video game called Spiritfarer. In Spiritfarer you play as Stella, a recently deceased young woman who, along with her adorable floof of a cat named Daffodil, takes over the job of “the ferryman” from Chiron: which means she will spend her afterlife carting around spirits on a wonderful boat as they get ready to depart into the next realm, meet the light, or whatever comes after the afterlife. You can get an art book separate from the game where you find out that Stella’s occupation was actually an end-of-life care practitioner. Figuring this out throughout the game was part of its charm, I feel!
The game cycle of Spiritfarer is as follows: find a new spirit, invite them on your boat, cook them their favorite meals, build them a house, cart them around to different islands to resolve some issues they had in life, and finally bring them to The Everdoor, a bridge where they become one with the universe and transcend to a constellation in the sky.
There are about ten characters that join you on this journey, and let me tell you I cried every single time I had to bring one of them to The Everdoor. Even the ones where I thought to myself, “I am really not that invested in this one, they haven’t even been around for that long, and have been kind of mean to me”, I was still a mess of full on ugly crying.
What got interesting to me the most was towards the end of the game, when I had brought most of my boat town’s occupants to the other-other side. I had the feeling I was getting close to the end of the game, maybe only had a few characters left, and most of the map had been explored. The boat started to feel empty with most passengers having moved on, and it started to feel like many of the passengers who were still around needed me less and less. I wondered to myself, if there were a “game+” mode that you play after beating the game, would it be worth having this huge boat town with no one around to live on it? Would I still have as much fun cooking endless amounts of food and exploring around the different continents to find the right ingredients if it wasn’t in service of anyone else? (for context: the main character of the game, Stella, has no need to eat or sleep). I started to also wish for somewhere that I could bring all this food and money I had accumulated. Surely someone could use all this after I am gone? I don’t even need it right now!
I became a bit selfish towards the end of the game, keeping one passenger on past when he asked to leave because I knew I would be left alone with 3 other passengers who asked a great deal of me. I did love all their characters, all the little side missions they brought me on. But the one I kept on, I did as a form of self care, so that I could still do it. The world felt kind of empty as my boat became empty, despite the world map being larger and less in darkness than it had ever been before.
The final scenes of the game involve Stella and her companion-cat Daffodil, rowing their little boat towards The Everdoor, to take their own last passage. Stella is a silent protagonist throughout the game, and there is no dialogue during the scene. Just slow rowing, bright lights, and an embrace between her and her feline friend, as she floats into the nothingness and becomes her own constellation in the sky. I cried the least during this segment: it seemed like there was nothing left to do in this world, and I was ready to move on to something else. The tears were still there, but I had grown accustomed to this feeling to saying goodbye, and saying goodbye to myself was a great bit of closure that I have rarely seen in a video game or narrative.
Overall, Spiritfarer was a wonderfully pleasant play through. I could choose when I wanted it to be meditative by farming, fishing, or cooking. I could choose when I wanted it to be exciting by battling sea dragons or catching lightning from the sky. I could choose when I wanted plot, and when I wanted to just coast. But best of all, it captured a very real life feeling: the moments in between when you are ready to leave but have not quite done so yet. I remember feeling this when I graduated from middle school and had to go back to my locker to get something, but was all alone in this halls which would never exist to me again. I had the same feeling when my husband and I were sitting in our car, cram packed with everything we owned, right after handing back the keys to our apartment. It was the moments in between “leaving home to move somewhere else” and “left home to move somewhere else”.
But for a few moments, we just sat there, in the car, waiting for something. A feeling, or permission, of when it is time to go. I think we feel that feeling several times throughout our life, and I think that same feeling probably fills us up right before we leave our life, to go find out whatever comes next.
