How Video Games Helped Me Cope with My Mom's Cancer & Passing

In this episode, I discuss how video games helped me get through one of the hardest times in my life as I dealt with my mom's battle with cancer, and eventual passing 27 years ago.

Cancer sucks, and watching a parent have to battle it when you're a teenager is really hard. In 1992, my mom went through her first battle with cancer, breast cancer to be specific. After a few years of remission, we found out her cancer was back, but this time it was more serious. While she had a lump removed from her breast, this time the cancer was in her ovaries as she had ovarian cancer.

As my mom went through her treatments, radiation, chemotherapy, and more, I was just a dumb teenager trying to not only get through high school but also cope with my mom's sickness. Thankfully for me, even then I had video games. I remember spending night after night playing my Super Nintendo, pouring countless hours into games to distract me from reality. While trying To capture 96 stars in Super Mario World, I was trying to distract myself as much as possible from reality.

To put things into perspective, these are just a few things that have happened over the last 27 years that my mom never experienced:

Green Bay winning Super Bowls under Favre & Rodgers
Dale Earnhardt winning a Daytona 500
Pathfinder landing on Mars
The rise of the Internet
Hanging chads
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire
Dale Earnhardt's Death
Miller Park/American Family Field
9/11
Napster
My getting married
My almost winning an RC National Championship (I got robbed by Chen Wha Chen, Damnit!)
Myspace
My oldest daughter's birth
The Columbia Shuttle disaster
Harry Potter
My interview of Tony Stewart
My middle brother getting married
The end of the Shuttle Program
The Brewers getting to the playoffs. Repeatedly!
Facebook
My nephew's Birth
The first black President
The first orange YUGE President
Minions
The MCU
My middle brother battling cancer. Twice
My oldest brother's 25th wedding anniversary
My youngest daughter's birth
The loss of our Dad
COVID
Elon Musk
The 50th Anniversary of Disney World

This was not meant to be a woe is me, my mother didn't love me, anything along those lines. I know my mom adored me, I never had any doubts about that. The tears in the sadness that you see are from her not being here anymore to see her family, to see her sons, and to have met her grandchildren. I'm only 4 years away from the age she was when she died, and I can't fathom having the courage to face what she went through. Twice. Thinking about it now, she was the age I am right now when she got her first cancer diagnosis. I don't know how I would face cancer or any terminal diagnosis. But I know how she did. And that provides me with strength and hope every day.

#VideoGames #Cancer #OvarianCancer #DealingWithLoss

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