@KvAT same! During the economic crisis I lost my office job and had to take up a dead end packaging job in a noisy factory for about 3 years...I spend all those days zoned out just like lewis
god that one makes me tear up just thinking about it, i think it’s significant that that one was so emotional because edith was genuinely close to him in her life so he wasn’t just a story passed down to her through generations, although ediths son didn’t know him personally so maybe my analysis is wrong🤷♂️
Dawn's/Edith's death destroyed me emotionally. Every mother has a fear of not being there to raise the child they literally sacrificed their life to push out. Im 28 with a 6yr girl. When she was 4, I got sick twice within 6mo. Gallbladder became cancerous and then I almost died from Sepsis. Thanks to my mother not taking care of her body, I inherited the repercussions of her self neglect. I suffer from gastrointestinal bleeding, insomnia and PTSD from an extreme amount of trauma no one should go through within a 27yr span. Like Dawn my body is starting to breakdown from the stress and like Edith, I'm trying to give all I can teach and protect my child from the trauma my family participated in giving me and watched me endure from outside forces. I had the type of mom your hear qout on lifetime movies. That mom who, instead of protecting, attacks and blame her own child for the bf/husband being sexually inappropriate towards them.
My great uncle had lost a finger on his job (it was on a truck/van or something) and *apparently* he thought it would be *funny* to return home and say (to his wife) “I seem to be forgetting something... ah! Here it is!” while pulling his severed finger from his pocket. I think my great aunt fainted. This was the same man who would give out marshmallows on Christmas and call them “snowman poop”.
This reminds me of my great grandfather, he was a steelworker and lost an alarming number of fingers, I think he was missing 3 fingers and a thumb. Anyways, when I was a kid I asked him how he lost all of them and if it hurt, like you do when you're a kid, he told me that he lost his pinky because he was picking his nose and sneezed. I miss him a lot and I think about that story a lot and it always makes me laugh.
My grandpa had a workshop full of fake prank devices. My favorite one was the rotary wall phone, which was wired to a button hidden under his desk. When he pushed the button, the phone would ring, and he’d ask you to pick it up for him. When you picked up the phone, it would start blaring stereotypical eccentric football/soccer newscasters into your ear.
I think that part of what stuck out to me about What Remains of Edith Finch was that there was never a clear answer as to whether the family was cursed or not. The game makes the point that even though death is commonplace and even normal, we tend to act as if it isn't. In the case of the Finches, they chose to believe that there was a curse placed on them. But the reality is that people are impermanent beings. The Finches were "cursed" to die from the start. We all are. We cannot live forever. But even if we can't, it doesn't matter because we get the chance to live. Life is special because it comes to an end.
That bit about not feeling true mourning and grief struck a personal note. I've had the same problem, and always connected it with my autism in my head, but maybe it's more universal than that, directly connected with reading about and seeing 'proper' mournings in media? You're the first person I've seen talk about it, anyway, so thank you for that.
Genuinely lovely comment. There are a lot of events that have social expectancies surrounding them, but death is definitely one of the weirdest. There aren't really any chances to ~practice~ it, so especially for the first couple times it happens, we can only base our behavior on the representations of it we've seen.
I can relate. It is so bizarre, this feeling that you don't know what's expected. I lost an uncle who was pretty close to the family, but what triggered sadness in me is seeing his wife crying at the funeral. I relate more by empathy to the people left alive than for the loss itself. Same in movies, if a character I'm attached to dies, I don't flinch, but as soon as I reaction from the relatives, I feel deeply sad.
I only had my first real funeral in the last month or so. I had no idea what to expect. I was sort of vacant, just not wanting to be around. Catching up with family I hadn't seen in years, eating the little triangle sandwiches. And then they brought the urn out. Everything clicked. This was Big Grandma, she could beat Ocarina of Time in a single night. She met Cassius Clay, who paid for her and my dad's meal. She tried to call me a week before she died, but I was at work and it was too busy. And now it's all back.
Im fifteen and was at a funeral last week there wasn't a body so I felt weird and alien more a lunch gathering especially to the more removed friends like my mum
My half-brother on my father's side died when I was a kid. I saw him once in a year at most - my mother saw him even less. Yet she cried so much for him when she got the news, while my eyes stayed dry. I hated myself for it for so long, I just couldn't understand. I loved him, I did, so why...? Years after that, I played Brothers: A tale of two sons and cried until I had a panic attack. I realized then that all the tears I couldn't cry for my brother were there. Everyone deals with grief differently. What Remains of Edith Finch knows this better than anyone. Thank you for your thoughtful analysis.
Thanks for sharing. I have a similar story. I am the first of the 12 grandchildren my beloved grandmother had. She wouldn't admit it in front of others but among my mom, aunts, and uncle, it was known and accepted that I was her favorite grandchild. And in return she was one of my favorite family members. Yet when she died after an unsuccessful heart bypass, I was the only one who didn't cry. I felt terrible about it. I questioned myself and my ability to feel emotion. I constantly wondered if I was a sociopath. I wanted to cry, after all I felt very sad...or at least I think I did? I watched my family grieve and I pretended, or better yet, acted like they did. Even though I didn't genuinely have those emotions. To me she was gone. There was nothing that could be done about it. As a result I remembered her for the great times she brought our family, but that's it. No overwhelming sadness, no crying for hours on end, no locking myself in my room alone. I still worry, to this day, if there's something wrong with me. The most terrifying thought I ever have is that when my mom and or dad pass on, that I won't cry for them either, and my remaining family will think I'm heartless and cold, just like they did back when my gma passed. And the scariest part is that maybe, just maybe, they'll be right.
@@jobieheiser443 everyone processes emotion differently, and that’s okay dude. there’s nothing wrong with you, i felt the exact same thing when my first cat died, everyone in the house was in tears and i didn’t cry for months, and then one night i thought about him and literally cried for almost 8 hours, got it all out and now i’m good :)
I know that this comment is pretty old, but it really hit home with me. My older sister died pretty recently. We had always been fairly close, but we had also been on rocky terms since she moved out. Her death was sudden and horrible, but not surprising. When I heard about it I cried for hours, but then not really again after. The only thing I had was a heart that ached so, so much. My mom still cries for her everyday, and my dad cried for her more than me- even though I arguably knew her better than either of them. A month after her funeral, I blamed Brothers as well. I wasn’t expecting how it ended, and the empty side of my controller reminded me so much of how I missed her. I cried for the rest of the way through, and then after as well. I haven’t cried again since, but I know not to hold it against myself.
After my dog passed, my therapist explained to me what grief was like, because unlike my family, I wasn't broken by her death, I loved her so so much, but she wasn't my dog, she was my parents dog, my brother and my sister's dog, we got her when I was in the 1st grade, I was tiny and whilst she was part of my life, and I cried when I found out, I didn't feel normal with how quickly I got over it. My therapist explained the 5 stages of grief, Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. Basic stuff I'd heard before, but then he told me something I wasn't aware of, we don't just pass these stages one by one until it's over with, we can bounce between them, we can skip and hop over them, we can be fine one second and angry the next, I did grieve, but it was faster than my family, because of my own experiences.
"Grow accustomed to the belief that death is nothing to us, since every good and evil lie in sensation. However, death is the deprivation of sensation. Therefore, correct understanding that death is nothing to us makes a mortal life enjoyable, not by adding an endless span of time but by taking away the longing for immortality."- Epicurus
"Most don't spend their time in graveyards as children" Well. Fortunately (or unfortunately, to some) I spent a lot of time in graveyards. My childhood involved a lot of burials, funerals and years of memorial services. Deaths of aunt's, uncles, cousins, grandparents (or "grand aunt/uncle" to westerners), nieces, nephews and so on. Was a common occurrence. Car accidents, fires, carbon monoxide, suicide, murder, medical malpractive, childbirth, underlying health issues and freak animal/insect attacks. I grew up, in a setting were we understood death as a natural thing. Come together to help the family, give them support. Mourn as collective community, and so on. So for me. Death can come at any time. It's always there, and I'm not scared. Because in the end, I'm going to die anyway. Why fret about it or leaving behind a "legacy"? It's a natural part of life
This was a genuinely beautiful analysis. Your personal anecdotes really resonated with the overall idea of the game. I think we prepare, mystify and almost idolize death to a point that there is an expectation of how it will be when it happens. However, in truth, it is a much more understated and quiet affair that emotionally we don't react with in grandiose displays of grief or remorse. I felt that while playing but you really put into words that feeling perfectly. That's my ramble over haha, great content keep it up!
Both of my grandmother's died on the day of their husbands funerals. When I tell that story I think of the unimaginable grief I felt of finding out the matriarchs of my family had died on a day that was already so sad. But when I tell the story to others, people hear a story of someone who was so in love that they couldn't live without their husband. I think that's the version I will tell to my future children
i think i have about the same problem with grief - i really loved my grandmother, she was nothing but nice to me and while she may have been strange, she wasnt a horrible person. but i didn't really feel much when she died a few years ago. i got to visit her house, while my mother and auntie tried to figure out what to do with the leftover money, and how to sell the house. i was most concerned with the cool chocolate pizza i got. i also once lived next to a somewhat elderly woman whose name i cant remember. she'd let me come over sometimes, and we'd chat, and like the child that i was at the time, i'd carefully play with some of the decorations while i was over. she was nice. but i don't remember feeling much when she died. i don't even know if i knew that she died. i haven't spoken to the new neighbours in years. the thing that frightens me the most about my parents dying in the future is the change in routine. currently, i talk to them daily, and rely on them for my wellbeing, since i'm legally recognized as disabled due to being autistic. if either of them died, half of the people i talk to in person are just... gone. and now one parent has to do all of the work, which i honestly don't feel comfortable asking them to do. if both of them died, i'd likely have to move in with my auntie and uncle. i don't trust myself to be able to take care of this house alone if i can barely take care of myself. and, as an autistic person who gets frightened just by yearly holidays, that'd be Really Fucking Scary. ... this?? got long and i don't know where i was going with it. but uh... similar hat, i guess -i think the most grief i ever felt at a death was when my cat died tbh,, he was very old and very kind, i still miss him- 2021 edit: after abt a year to Think, idk how much of this i was right about. i mean?? it's true i didn't feel a lot about my grandmother dying, i still don't remember if i felt anything about my neighbour dying, i still think a large part of my fear of my parents dying is my fear of change, and i still think the most grief i've felt so far was when my cat died. idk, i just think the deal w/ my parents is more complicated. i'm bad at putting names to my feelings so idk if this is a "well looks like this whole comment is obselete lol" update or more of a "this still kind of holds true but a bit differently" way................... all i know is that when my aunt caught The Plague i Was concerned, but fuck if i know to what degree. (she got better it's ok) also i think i could be self-sufficient if it came to it actually. it'd be really hard to adapt to though
_Going to copy and past the comment I wrote above:_ I can relate. I felt something as soon as I heard the news of my grandfather's death, but it wasn't the uncontrollable sadness I was expecting, it was more a feeling of detached reality - like watching aliens invading the planet on the news. I simply put the thought away and continued my day normally. When I got home I forced myself to think properly about it, and then cried my eyes out, but that only lasted a couple of minutes. I felt I couldn't mourn properly afterwards, so I got busy and wrote a speech. When I later visited my relatives, I was sad, but only out of empathy for them. I could sense their distress, and wanted to help somehow, so I tried to project an upbeat lightness and affection, to brighten the mood, which I think did help somewhat. But I was worried all the time that someone would misinterpret my optimistic smile as a sign that I didn't care enough. I just felt inappropriate. My grandfather died during surgery, and although the outcome was unexpected, the risks were known, so we had one final talk just before he went under, and I consider it a decent goodbye. He went peacefully. It was similar with my grandmother, just one year after. I visited her in person while she was hospitalised, but healthy of mind. I wish I could've been more with them, especially in their final days, but I'm at peace with their deaths, so I don't feel any sadness. All I feel is an emptiness, a bittersweet melancholy, because I treasure the moments I've spent with them, but I know the memories will only fade away. But it was very different with my dog, Jolie. She developed an enlarged heart, which meant that whenever she got excited her lungs filled with fluid and she couldn't breath well. She always had a young spirit and loved to play, and any visitors would bring her great joy, so when those things started causing her pain, it was hard for her. Every time I visited, which was not often enough, I was afraid I was going to trigger her death. She started having crises at night, and had to take emergency injections. One night her heart was beating so loud that it woke my mother (a heavy sleeper), who then hurried with my father to the pet hospital the vet had recommended for an emergency. But the hospital was far away, and it took forever to get there. Every minute felt like it could be the last, and caused more distress to everyone in the car. Jolie started to suffocate, very slowly, and it must have been horrible. I can only imagine how it felt for her, not understanding the situation, why she was being carried away somewhere, when she needed the comfort and familiarity of home, and only feeling the stress, the fear, the pain. But when they finally arrived, the hospital was closed, and no one was there. They didn't know of any other hospitals, so they called everyone they knew, desperate for alternatives. Eventually they found another one, but they had to backtrack most of the way, and by then it was too late. Jolie died on my mother's arms. They tried to revive her at the hospital, but it was just too late. Next time I saw her, only her ashes were left. When my mother told me that story, after they'd spent the rest of the night crying together, it just broke me. It still makes me tear up whenever I remember it. It's not that I loved my dog more than my grandparents, it's just the circumstances. Last time I saw her, I didn't even give her a goodbye hug (afraid of causing her excitement). I had no way to communicate that no matter how far I was, I still thought of her, I still loved her. I wasn't there for her in her final moments, not in any way. And her final moments were spent in suffering. It wasn't a good death.
Edith Finch was one of the most unique, continually surprising games I've ever played, and by far the most creative use of the interactive medium for storytelling. I worried at first that the terrible scenes of death were merely morbid for the sake of morbidity, but the shape of the whole became clear by the end.
The part about not feeling much mourning when people close to you pass hit home hard, I've had many family members pass, ones that I knew pretty well, but I never really felt anything and it felt wrong. Around a year ago now, my close online friend passed away from cancer. It was the first time I felt extreme grief at someone close to me passing, and I still have a hard time dealing with it. The thought that she's gone and I can't go and just pop into her DM's on discord and say hi feels horrible. It feels weird that an online friend's passing causes me more pain than all the people in my family that I knew in real life passing did. Listening to this essay made me break down crying thinking about all that again, I miss her. Maybe it was the bond I had shared with her in the space we shared, we were both moderators on a discord server. The staff team there feels like a small family, and it feels like we share a deep bond with each other. She joined staff in the same generation that I did, and I think that shared bond is what made it so painful.
Accepting death doesn’t mean you won’t be devastated when someone you love dies. It means you will be able to focus on your grief- unburdened by the existential questions of “why do people die?” Or “why is this happening to me?” Death isn’t happening to you. Death is happening to us all. - Caitlin Doughty, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
My grandfather died very suddenly when I was 15. I remember the exact moment I found out, my mother had picked me up from school and we were going to pick up my little siblings before we went to the hospital. We were almost to their school when my mom got a call from my dad telling us Grandpa had died. I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed and after a few minutes I just. Stopped crying. I didn't cry at his funeral (held on my little siblings' 13th birthday, I always feel like I need to emphasize that), I didn't cry when he wasn't there for my 16th birthday the next month, or when he wasn't there for Easter or Christmas or anything. I've always felt so guilty that I just stopped crying. This is the man who baptized me and taught me how to play chess and let me babble about Warrior Cats for hours at a time. I wanted him to be the one to perform my wedding when I got married someday. It's taken me a while to deal with how grief works. I grieve differently than a lot of other people. I think I realized that I needed to be strong for my little siblings. I'm tearing up now as I type this and I'm still not sure if it's because I miss my grandfather or if I feel guilty for not missing him like everyone else does. Sorry for the ramble, it just kinda came out. Excellent video as always, thanks for making it.
I felt something similar when my sister died. I was 7 when she passed and when I look back on when my mom told me the news I just remember feeling...nothing much about it. I just watched cartoons and played around like everything was normal while my family was breaking down all around me. I barely remember her and all that I know about her is stuff my parents have told me. I can’t even remember what her voice sounded like. So thanks for making this, it really helped.
I wonder if the reason why we feel like we should make such a big showing of grief is because of the Victorian Era. When Queen Victoria's husband died, she mage a HUGE deal about his death, to the point where she wore black (mourning clothes) until the day she died. And since the Victorians practically worshiped Victoria, they emulated this standard of making a huge show of grieving, so much so that this standard was passed down for generations, even making its way across America subconsciously through the descendants of colonizers. Hmm I donno, I suppose I'm just talking nonsense. But in any case great video! Edith Finch is one of my favorite games. X3
The English started colonizing in 1584 with the failed Roanoke Colony, then really kicked off when the Virginia (London) Company settled Jamestown in 1607. The Declaration of Independance was signed in 1776, and Queen Victoria was born in 1819. While she did agressively expand the British empire, the areas she subjugated had their own cultures and mourning practices. Canada, maybe, but doubtful.
I think it might be more the other way around. If you read older European literature - really, anything from before the past few centuries, although especially ancient and medieval literature - grief is so much more of a... Spectacle. If you read the Greek and Roman epics, someone is wailing with grief every chapter. I am currently reading the Odyssey, and the amount of lamentation is, from a modern perspective, startling. So I suppose the question is less about when we started making a show of grief, but rather, when did we stop?
the idea that we take dark themes more seriously and respect them more than lighter themes is SO TRUE. it's a lot like how a negative opinion of something is often seen as more important, valuable, intelligent than a positive or neutral one. also yesss Joseph Anderson's essay on "the villain of edith finch" is fantastic
This video hits really hard for me. When my grandmother passed away due to cancer, I was there in the hospital. I got to watch her die and even when stepping outside, watching my mom break down and cry I couldn't shed a single tear. Looking back on it I never knew why. I love her so much and she was there for me when I needed her. But this video helped me. Grief is different for everyone. Of course I knew that but after watching this it put it into perspective. It doesn't have to be me crying to be grief. Me being there alone and being in my thoughts was enough and knowing she passed away and remembering her was my way of handling it. Only now do I cry when remembering her and understanding what she truly meant to me. But the most conflicting thing I had with myself for the longest time was when my online friend, went into a heart surgery but didn't make it. Somehow, I cried more than I had for my grandmother. I don't know if it's the different relationships I had established with the two of them that made me view grief differently or something. But I still don't know why. And I wish I knew.
Yours and Joseph Anderson about this game are forever gonna be in my playlist. I've gone through recent deaths just this past month, which is both bizarre and routine. Thanks for a down-to-earth look of this game and its theme.
To me, the way What Remains of Edith Finch deals with death, mourning and the loss of a family member and the message given to one at the very end in Ediths note is one of the best in video game history. That makes it one of the best games I have ever played and the first time experience a chilling one to say the least.
It’s interesting to read everyone’s comments on this video. I see a lot of people saying that they relate to Jacob about how he felt when his friend passed and I can relate in some ways. When I was really young my great grandma passed. She was a huge part of my life up to that point, but when she passed I remember standing around my family at the hospital and seeing them cry. I didn’t feel the need to cry but I did anyways because everyone else was. I didn’t understand all of the nuance of the word “death”, I was just a kid. All I understood was the fact that she was gone. My grandma on my dads side passed away almost a year ago and so I remember her death and the process much better than my great grandma passing. I was definitely upset. It was weird thinking she would be gone, I never really realized she would die I guess and I was sad that I’d never get more time with her. I also had time to process her death though. We knew she was dying for a couple months before she actually passed and that gave me time to think over it. I also spent a lot of time with my family in these months which gave me a support net of sorts. I can’t say I was completely breaking down but it effected me for sure. Now, where my relationship with death gets a bit more complicated is with my own friend passing away. She died when we were young (like 10). It was an unexpected car crash right outside her house which was in the neighborhood I lived in. I couldn’t process the fact that someone who was almost the same age as me and lived so close to me could also die. The hardest thing about her death, though, was the fact that nothing really did change. Her family moved away, I never went to the funeral (I couldn’t stand the thought of seeing her body in a coffin) and so my life just went on as usual. It didn’t really affect any one I knew personally beside for affecting my mom a bit, and I realized this. Nothing changed. That terrified me. I couldn’t face the fact that if she had just moved away unannounced my life would have played out the same way. I basically denied her death for years. I knew that it had happened but I never confronted it. The only times I ever confronted it was when it got to be to much and I would have emotional break downs. That lasted for about 2 years and than I finally started working out the whole thing. This was long, but I thought I’d share my experience. It just goes to show that everyone experiences things differently. There’s no right way to grieve. It doesn’t have to be long and drawn out and depressing but sometimes it is exactly that. I think that media shows that narrative more because it’s more interesting to watch. It wouldn’t be as interesting of a story if someone got over a death easier or quicker.
I don't know if anyone else does this but I feel like I mourn in snippets. My grandfather passed away when I was 8 years old. He suffered several strokes and was in the ICU for about three months before he passed away. I don't remember how long he was there for. The only thing I really remember is the way that every visit jerked me in a new direction. The first time I was told he wouldn't survive a week. The next they said he would recover fully. Three days later he was in a coma. Five days more and I was able to give him one of my stuffed animals while he was eating macaroni and smiling at me. Too weak to move. Standing up to give me a hug. Another coma. Moved out of the ICU. The back and forth gave me nightmares and still will if I think on it too long. When he died, I cried. Once. I cried when my aunt let us into the room and I saw his dead body on the bed and didn't kmow what to do. That night I went home and slept better than I had in weeks. I had an answer. I didn't like it, but I had it. I didn't cry for another 8 months. He was a big part of my life but I processed that loss in snippets. I cried a little when my grandmother moved to California to live with my aunt and I got his bed to sleep in. I cried a little when I called his phone number and didn't hear his voice asking for a message. I cried when I found one of his old mugs in my cupboard. My mom told me I could cry all the time for the first month and couldn't understand why I didn't. I was sad and I missed him but I had to confront my loss piece by piece. An old drawing he pinned on the fridge. One of the ceramic birds on a shelf. A picture of his chair. I don't think I'll ever be done mourning. I don't think I'm meant to be. But I feel stable and I can think of him fondly and at the end of the day, no matter what I've been told, I feel like I mourn in an okay way. If anyone else mourns like me, you definitely aren't alone. And if anyone else mourns in a way that people don't respect or consider weird or wrong: You mourn however the fuck you need to. Death is tied to life and coping with it will never be as uniform as people want it to be. You'll get through it one day at a time.
I deeply, deeply relate to how you feel about grieving. I am the same. when my grandparents died, when my uncle died... I felt ok... there's Nothing worse then people expecting you to feel a certain way. nothing more idiotic and cruel than forcing someone to feel sad, "because that's whats people are supposed to do!" there's nothing wrong with you if you don't Grieve. maybe because there's a certainty that oneday.. I will follow.
I noticed that I experience heavy emotions in a delay... at the moment it happens I feel nothing at all...but eventually the emotion will float to the surface.
that was nice. reminds me of the place in my heart held by a series of unfortunate events, that always remarked on the tragic nature of its stories, but was also full of wisdom and tenderness and bizarre unexpected details that helped me internalise bad things happening as an inevitable part of life, knowing the context of tragedy and all the little details makes me appreciate it as a whole, from beginning to end, not a random happening of only chaos and confusion, but the beauty in a fire that took careful gathering of wood precise application of friction the gift of light and warmth, not just a death...
When my grandpa died a year ago I thought the rest of my family was insane for not being upset about it. I was randomly bursting into sobs for the entire day like my body had no connection at all to my mind. I kept thinking of him giving my siblings and I rides in the wagon hitched to his tractor, through tall grass and fields and fireflies. And that man was GONE. How could he possibly not exist anymore? Last weekend I visited my grandma. Our visit was nice, though we didn't have much to talk about. She lives in a nursing home and can hardly stand on her own, so she spends most of her day sitting in a sofa in her room She joked often about how frustrated she was to still be alive, and it made sense. Literally all she has left to do is wait to die, granted with caring family and relative comfort. (Ironically, catching COVID-19 didn't affect her much at all. One of the luckiest 99-year-olds around who was totally asymptomatic.) I somehow understand now why the rest of my family wasn't upset by my grandpa's death. Traditions of wagon rides in fields didn't end when my grandpa died, they were already long over. I grew up and my grandparents grew old. It's not always a tragedy for things to end, because new things begin anyway. I don't know what my point here is or how it relates to the video. I just needed to write this down somewhere.
0:51 oh my god this reminds me of a story about my grandpas dog when he was a kid. So one day when his whole family was out of the house there was some sort of gas explosion or something and the house exploded. The dog apparently got flung all the way across the street and was totally fine
I like how you focus on how What Remains of Edith Finch normalizes death and how life continues to move on for those left behind -- that's a takeaway I haven't heard before about this game and it helps put the story it's telling in a more realistic, positive light. I appreciate both that and the conversations that your essay has inspired here in the comments.
When my grandmother died i tried not to show the weakness i had felt afterwards i eventually accepted her death and moved on. I am at a point in my life when im going to start seeing more and more people die around me, but i cant ready myself for it and i can only wait for it to be over.
I'd like to offer a perspective from the other side of the fence. Where others here often have difficulty grieving and allowing themselves to grieve either through neglect of the emotion or through inability to connect with it, I deal with it nearly all the time, even when people I don't know very well pass away. My friend, let's call him Dan, has had a difficult life. His father left him when he was 4, because his mother was a stripper that became pregnant. Dan's parents only married because he was on the way and sometime after he turned four, they finally split, a long and torrid relationship leaving Dan very scarred by the actions of both parents. Despite this, Dan's mom was a very loving and kind person, and saw him as nothing less than the light of his world. She was immensely cool for a 30-something mom in the 2000s. I came over to play Xbox with Dan one day in 4th grade, only to find his mom couch-gaming in the living room on her big ass 56" TV, something that Dan wasn't allowed to do. She had beaten a Gears of War title, she had been playing since Dan left for school in the morning. Needless to say, she was pretty awesome. Then the unthinkable happened. She was found in her car, dead from, of all things, an aortic dissection. If you're unaware, an aortic dissection is almost exactly what it sounds like. Your aorta tears, completely randomly and sometimes for no reason at all, and the bleed is too big for the body to staunch, and you bleed to death internally while being completely unaware of what's wrong. It just feels like a sudden and rapid lack of oxygen, like you're breathing fine but nothing's happening. Then you pass out. I attended her funeral. I only met the woman three times, but at the funeral with Dan, who I went with purely to support, and nothing else, I found myself bawling almost as much as him. I looked at him and said "I know I don't have the right to be here or mourn." He simply responds with "It's okay man, it's not like you can control it." All of this is to say that I oftentimes show up to funerals to support family members or friends in their time of need, and I find myself mourning the loss of people I barely knew. It feels presumptuous in its own way. Like I said before, do I even have the right to mourn the death of someone I barely knew? Death saddens me, like it does most people, but because of the fact that I see it not as just the loss of a person and their past, and present, but also their future as well. So many conversations never had because someone was taken too soon, so many memories left unmade because their time came too quickly. So much left undone. But ultimately, I feel I'm better for it. I feel more connected to the people I care about when I mourn with them, to give them support by joining in. I know, like I said, it sounds presumptuous, doesn't it?
I had a friend of mine from high-school die. It's been 6 years, and I don't think I've ever cried about it until today. For a long time, I always just felt disconnected from it. I didn't know how to feel about it. I still don't know. But today I cried. I miss my friend. I miss you, Jeanette.
This video of all of yours has pull some heart strings. I lost too many young family and friends in the last couple years and have grown so numb, to numb to mourn. But this put a apple in my throat and maybe even some acception. Thank you.
I can relate to your perception of grief. When my father died nearly 10 years ago I didn't want to deal with the situation at all. It was pretty similar to the first stage of grief according to the Kübler-Ross model. I knew that he was dead but I didn't want to feel sad about it, I didn't want to grief. At his funeral it struck me for a moment and I cried for a short time but that was it. Other than that his death left me untouched. I always felt guilty about my lack of sadness and I thought that I was supposed to feel much worse - but I didn't. I guess grief is just different for every person.
so i'm returning to this video after a while, and after finally playing edith finch myself - it took three years of owning it to be "in the right headspace" for it. and in the end it was a much more comfortable experience than i expected, and i'm still glad i waited to play it. your bit about not knowing if you're grieving correctly, if you're experiencing "true" grief was so memorable, and i'm tempted to offer my own perspective: the only times i've felt i was grieving "correctly", where i was absolutely enveloped in grief at the "appropriate" moment, it was for people i'd started mourning while they were still alive. sudden deaths absolutely wreck your ability to respond accordingly, and sometimes you only ever find yourself able to mourn them in your own way weeks, months, years down the line.
This is probably the only video essay that's gotten me this close to actual tears. And all of your other videos are equally high-quality. I'm really glad I found this channel.
Is it that people don't know how to mourn, or due to the fast pace of modern society, aren't given the time to mourn? How many times have people been told of a family or friend passing... and just stayed at work, or school. and gone the next day, and the next. or decided to distract themselves with something else like social media or games or netflix.
The part about your friend's passing and how you handled it was great. Although I haven't had an experience of someone who I was very close to, I have had to attend funerals of other relatives who I didn't know all that well, along with several animal deaths. Both those experiences and just other mourning experiences just have never really effected me. For example, when we put our (14?) year old dog to sleep, my Mom, and even my Stepdad who had only known him for a few years were balling their eyes out. I've known that dog my whole life, and haven't shed a single tear over the past few months. I knew, or at least thought that that reaction was not normal, or maybe even wrong, but hearing someone else like that was reassuring in a way.
Thank you so much for writing about this subject. The topic hit a cord for me. The first person that I deeply, actively mourned and left me severely deregulated was when my best friend at the time fled to Turkey to marry the person she loved the most. She fled from her parents, from the Dutch culture, from her trauma and her pain at the cost of everything to be with a man in a relationship that turned toxic. At the time, I understood her reason why. Now that I am older, I understand it even better. Yet nothing no pen can describe the feeling of having a first day uni and finding out that she isnt there. I cannot describe how I felt when I called the head of the department and her telling me she quit and fled. 3 months of radio silence. I was able to write her E-mails but the answers were few and far in between. At some point she returned to the Netherlands for a little while. I visited her then and again, nothing could describe how it was to hear how she left home. That she was dressed in her work clothes, had breakfast with her father and left with only her working bag and her wallet. Her parents took away her pasport so she couldnt flee. So she left with little cash, a workbag with the essentials, lied to everyone and went to the airport to catch a plane with a ticket her fiance bought for her. I had no idea how to grapple with the situation. I kept getting flashbacks, for months, years even I had the urge to call and text. The feeling left when I accepted that I didnt want to share my life with her again. Because when we did share, the burns she left would take months to heal. She wasnt safe. And accepting that was the hardest thing I could ever do.
bro i just discovered you and have been binging your videos so hard and i simultaneously can’t believe but also of course you have an edith finch video, one of my favorite games of all time. i love what you do so much
You're gonna be big. I just know it. Glad I stumbled upon your channel while the comments are still visible among the sea of comments that will one day swarm your videos. I'm bad at dealing with death too, the last death I really mourned and processed was of a dog I had run over when I was 10 or so. Since then I think I only cry when a death has a soundtrack accompanying it. And I feel so sorry for that. I hope I can deal with this problem before my closest relatives die.
I feel sorry too, last time I cried was probably the most I cried. And it was over a comic made by someone in the Touhou fandom (Osana Reimu). I cried more over that than I did when my great grandmother died, I was young but I still feel bad that I cried more over a fictional character than a person I actually knew in real life and cared for. The character couldnt care for me, yet why did I care for them?
I feel the same. His channel is going to explode soon and I'm craving it lol. On the other side, I think it's better how you deal with death, not crumbling down doesn't mean it doesn't affect you, somehow I think it's very healthy. More power to you, brother.
I think your problem with true grief/mourning is actually a sign of a calmer relationship with death. We cry and mourn and sulk to release our emotions, and to express a feeling of tragic injustice. But if death is a natural coda to life and something that brings peace, why would we cry? What injustice has been committed? All things die, and that's okay. We aren't owed the presence of the deceased but they are owed their rest. To beg and cry at the foot of their graves is a disrespect to the life they have already lived.
I relate a lot to what you said about not being able to mourn properly, not feeling the grief as expected. My grandma, who helped raise me, and who I lived with for most of my life, passed last year. Yet it was almost like I couldn't feel the loss. Weeks after it happened I had already started to forget that she was gone. Now that could be my ADHD at work, but the absence of grief at the time, when my father was sobbing his heart out, unsettled me.
My father, aunt, and 3 grandparents, and 3 great grandparents died within about ten years of one another, from about the time I was 12 till about the time I was 22. I don't think I ever once had a "break down crying" moment, but I don't think I've ever stopped mourning them. None of them died in terrible or unexpected ways. My father was young, but even his death didn't surprise me given his life choices. For a while I felt so bad not sobbing the way my mother (at the time, divorced from him) did. But that's just not how grief makes me feel.
There is a very big difference between reading death stories of your ancestors who are gone and have no real connection to and experiencing it to happen to someone close in your own presence.
as someone who is currently in the process of grieving and has played this game and loved it, i can confidently say that there is no single way to grieve and perceive death. humans created customs and expectations around it, but nothing of that matters when death arrives. it plunges you into depths you could never imagine and forces you to face existence and absence alike.
I get what you mean when you say that grief is so often unconventional or “done wrong”. I can attest to the fact that the five stages of grief make no sense, there is no orderly progression of emotions the the wake of someone’s sudden absence. I can also attest to the “living with it” bit. I lost my father a few years prior and the best way I can describe grief is a pearl. It begins as a irritant, a corrosive, disruptive thing. And slowly, as time goes on, you add layers around it, shiny, pretty layers that add the sweetness to bittersweet absence. I remember watching Spirited Away with my father and I smile, and I don’t think about the weeks before his death. You grow around your grief, you gain the ability to reminisce without sadness, and you make space for the absence. It doesn’t shrink, you just reorganize around it. It is forever a part of you, and it’s not a bad thing.
Jacob, I totally understand what you meant about not having mourned someone's passing yet. My father died when I was 10. I was sad at the time, but I didn't mourn his passing at that time. This wasn't to say my father was not an amazing father, he was. I just didn't mourn his passing then. Life went on and I went on with it. However, about 10 years later, I truthfully mourned my father's death. Being so far removed from the original incident of his death made that a really difficult process. It seemed as if everyone else in my life had finished their mourning and didn't want to relive those feelings simply because I was late to the party. As a result of this it was necessary I mourn differently. I made it my goal to find out as much as I could about my father as just a person. What were his mannerisms? After work, what did he like to do? What things kept him up at night? What goals did he leave unfulfilled? I wanted to find as much of myself in him as I could. It was incredibly difficult to say the least, but I am almost thankful that it happened that way. At 10 years old, I did not truly comprehend what growing up without my father really meant. I would have been mourning what I think I had lost, not what I actually had lost. As an early 20 something, I had real first hand experience about what high school with one parent actually was like and the jealously I felt from my friend's close relationships with their fathers. More importantly, I knew that I would never have my own father to be my lifelong friend once I had grown up and was no longer just his child. I was thankful to have had the opportunity to mourn these things and not just the man that didn't come home one day. It felt a more complete mourning not some half baked child's attempt at feeling the way he was supposed to feel in response to a dead parent.
I don't know what to say man. A lot of your videos really move me but this actually made me cry. Neither sadness nor joy - I don't know why exactly. I guess it might be your awesome rhethoric and the subject matter in relation to my own experience with loved ones dying from illness, accidents, OD's and even in war. I do know that this has somewhat helped me understand what it means to have known a person, truly known, and cope with their eventual demise. The way you deal with death in your videos shows a great understanding of life and although I just watch your videos and we'll probably never meet - which is a shame - know that somehow you're still one of the people I respect the most in my life. I've struggled with meaninglessness my whole life. That of my own life or the death of those close to me. I've searched for in academia, in a war and in a heroin addiction I'm currently recovering from. I've found a better cure for meaninglessness in your videos, somehow, than in my own life's experiences. Maybe truly understanding what you have to say will help me find meaning in my own experiences. Or maybe I'll learn not to needlessly search for meaning and just accept things as they are, as they happened and as they will play out in the future. Know that you're a tremendously postivie influence on my life and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for sharing your wisdom here. I'd never thought that somebody I haven't ever met could learn me so much. Kindest regards, Your new Patreon, Alexander Jonker. P.S. excuse me if I made some grammatical or spelling errors, English is not my native language although I speak it very well, it's not perfect. Nothing ever is.
Came to watch this after being reminded that it exists from you on the MinnMax Edith Finch Deepest Dive. "You can only sit shiva so long." What a powerful statement of hope and... normalcy, perhaps? Big fan. :-)
Most emotional part about edith finch for me was when I was in the attic and there was a space ship tow underneath a window facing the bright moon in the night sky. And it made feel so nostalgic being a kid pretending to be in space. And I got super sad and put my controller down having that toy and the moon in front of me, then it started raining outside and I had alot of tears in my eyes. I didnt even have to do anything and that moment holds more weight than alot of games.
Fantastic video, you never dwell on any aspects of the game that don’t add to your point. Edith Finch is such a special experience and this video helped me unpack what it was as a whole.
How are you so good at this? I'm so impressed and jealous at the same time, I've always loved your videos and it has inspired me a lot. Thank you for making this it's beautiful
I was just about to recommend it, but I see Jacob already did. Eh, I'll say it anyway. If you want to watch another (at least in my opinion) equally good video essay that focuses more on the plot of the game, I HIGHLY recommend watching Joseph Anderson's "The Villain of Edith Finch". It is GREAT.
I have long struggled with not mourning someone's passing till far after. I used to have a song which I would specifically use to just let the waterworks flow. But as I got older even that didn't necessarily do it. Probably the biggest gut punch for me was around a year after my great grandmother's passing. Not seeing her at the Thanksgiving dinner kinda broke me. The thing that hits me even more is sometimes I will have dreams where she is back. It's been around 7 years since her passing and to this day I will have dreams that she is alive again at a family gathering and we will talk and talk and talk in the dreams. Sometimes she even acknowledges that she can only be there for a while. I don't care what your beliefs are on the super natural, but experiences like that where it is definitely her, she's visiting me in the afterlife.
I'm in the same boat with regards to mourning. I never felt like I mourned "the right way" when my father died. I thought there was something wrong with me, or maybe with our relationship, and it is incredible to hear that maybe, just maybe, it's... normal. I feel like love and grief are the concepts that are not only the most warped by popular media, but where this warping does the most damage. Because especially for the first times, we have completely wrong expectations about what it's like and what it should be like, and as evidenced by quite a few comments here - the discrepancy between expectations and the much less "choreographed" reality causes a lot of hurt and insecurities.
That not being able to cry struck a chord with me as a couple months ago, a dear family friend, a man who had raised me for 8 years while my parents did fuckall, just dropped dead. I haven't once cried about him, theres some inner conflict about that and i didnt even go to his funeral. Maybe it's that the way our brains handle grief is different and people have differing ranges when it comes to grief and emotion in general. Or maybe we're all just psychopaths, who knows. Very strange occurrence but glad to see someone else has experienced it.
alternate reading of the house where it fits right into the ones discussed in his video about haunted houses in stories no but it really does seem kind of an inverse of that, right? a house that doesn't reject humanity, but one that is haunted by an excess of humanity
I watch this channel all the time and I love it, I just finished edith finch and it blew my mind, I looked up some more in depth reviews of other players and found out jacob made a video on the game and I’m kinda loosing my mind
OK..I have no idea why but I cried allot viewing this.. it felt compassionate calming soothing.. sure it was sad from people I for example never played for people who in theory dosent even are real..a cursed yes cause they never experienced such things as life when growing up when becoming more of what they had... But yet with it all it feels normal natural common and..something that could also be laughed upon..ignored to continue to pass on, Games media and life in general made me feel and obvious sensation that death and all of this is natural but I do not mean it in a bad way it takes a bunch of time so why should we only now spend it and talk about it and get worried?.. We have so actual many things to live for and somehow just...after watching this made me felt...happy?..with all of the mixtures and words and the sensations that I feel right now the rambles and such I simply just want to say.. maybe..Thank you?... For how you delivered this for how and what you gave to me for the things that you have done to me to know this game...THank you so much for what you did anyway
I've been watching most your videos over the past 2 days and honestly I cant wait for you to make more content. You are a fantastic content creator and I'm very excited to see what comes next :)
I have never cried for a relative's death. I feel sadness, sometimes, and I feel akward being there, with other relatives. I loved some of these relatives, I cared for some, but I didn't feel gief. When a friend and her girlfriend were killed in a car accident, it was the same. I felt out of place among their relatives and common friends. 20 hours ago a neighbour lady died of covid, it was shocking, and I feel bad because I have know her for 35 years, her son Heber has been my friend for 35 years. But I don't feel grief. But I know I will feel devastated if my mother or my niece died. I don't think I could cope with that loss. I hope I die first.
This is only slightly related but I recommend checking out the album Deadwing by Porcupine Tree. It's essentially a ghost story about a man named David who lives a sad life and decides to kill himself for a variety of reasons. It's a piece of artwork that holds a very special place in my heart, but most importantly it handles death in a very specific way that I can't quite explain. It's also an album that I have failed to give a proper analysis/properly explain the story of. Anyways check it out if you like Jacob Gellers content, who knows maybe you'll find your own meaning to the album.
I just love this game. The atmosphere, narrative, and sound track, including much more, makes me get goosebumps. This video feels nostalgic, but the game is only about 1-2 years old! Well done!
i grew up in a religion fixated on the idea of immortality, and of gaining eternal life. as a child, i remember asking my dad if we'd ever get sleepy in heaven -- i had yawned a very big yawn and enjoyed it so much and then realized with shattering horror that maybe i wouldn't get to yawn in the afterlife. he said he didn't think we got sleepy or hungry. then what would we DO? i said. i don't remember his answer. as i got older, death became horrible in contrast to the thing i was supposed to want, the immortality. i held the goal of immortality very close, because that was what one does. it was very odd when i realized i didn't actually care about what happened to me after i died. it was even odder to realize that i actually want to die, that i wish to stop. maybe not now. i don't particularly want to hasten it. but i'd like to, someday. i always thought maybe there was something wrong with me. death just isn't....horrifying. it isn't frightening. i don't fear it. i won't mind when it happens. but that's wrong, isn't it? shouldn't i be afraid? shouldn't i be absolutely griefstricken when someone is gone? edith finch made me feel loved and held in company. it was so lovely to know that i am not alone. i don't need to be afraid, or to hold shame for not being afraid. i can just...be.
What an astonishingly amazing game! It gets you right from the pause menu , where you see the family tree, not giving it much thought initially, but then when you look longer, you start realizing that everyone from that tree but 2, is gone, many at unusually young ages of you do the math. Then you look at the ones in the tree that made it to an older age and start thinking what they might have gone through dealing with these untimely deaths. Even before I reached the mansion, I had a lay of the family plot and the tragedies that it might have endured over the years. And then when you actually explore the mansion, it starts slowly unfolding the history of the family , merely by presenting you props and environmental cues. You look at the calendar and wonder what happened the day that they stopped updating the calender. You look at the half emptied garage and wonder what happened here. You look at the Chinese take out boxes and wonder when was the last meal that was had here and what caused the family to just up and leave like that. You look at random pictures at the wall, and try to deduce based on their clothing styles and the people in the pictures, which branch of the family tree it might be, what time period it was and whether the picture was taken before or after a tragic death in the family. And all this,the game makes you do without telling you to. You could just as well ignore all of these cues that are really just out there in the open , and yet you would eventually learn about the family, but if you're curious to know about the family from the get go, it is so much more rewarding. What an amazing game! What an amazing mechanic to engage the player with the game and actually making you feel like you're Edith!
In our home and religious path we venerate our beloved dead, our ancestors, and we keep them as part of our every day by leaving offerings, talking to them, carrying them with us in the form of jewelry or other means. It makes it feel like the ones we lose are never really lost. They don't really go anywhere even though they no longer have a physical form. This video reminds me of that a lot
I didn’t feel sad after I finished watching this, or existential for anything. It made me feel kind of weird and clean I really felt cool after watching this and the air smelled kind of like flowers
You my friend have a lucky cousin. I mean not to sound rude or anything but a baby flying out of a window in a car crash and somehow landing SAFELY on a cornfield that happened to be nearby, that is some amazing divine luck right there.
personal death story time, because it seems to be a theme here. i've only grieved for one person, which i knew online (a story we'll skip), despite knowing several people in family, and friends of, who have passed. I've grieved for my dog who passed away at 17, and... that's it. i've always felt worse about the effect it carried to other people, and have always done my best to guide _them_ through _their_ mourning. i think that it's the suffering that comes before and after that hits me, not the event itself. i don't know what that says about me as a person, and maybe it could be attributed to the life i've lived, but... there you have it. and hey, if you're reading this comment, i hope you're having a good day or night.
The words of Gandalf the Grey in The Fellowship of the Ring really come to mind here: "All that matters is what we do with the time that is given to us." We all have a limited amount of time on this world. Make the most of it.
I haven't ever had to go through the death of a "loved one" yet, though my paternal grandmother and maternal grandfather are both dead. My grandmother died when I was 4, my grandfather was when I was 10 or maybe 11. It didn't hit me, ever. My memories of them were severely limited as my grandmother died when I was young, and my grandfather lived 1000km away from me and rarely visited. I have only one memory of them each, for my grandmother, she was having a conversation with my mom I have no idea what about. For my grandfather, I would've been around maybe 2 or 3 years old, I saw a man in an RV that I didn't recognize that I later was helped to recognize as my grandfather. Its been almost 16 years since my grandmother died, and my grandfather 18 years ago. If you're confused about what i mean, i mean they died when I formed my last memory of them. I couldn't understand death then, so i couldn't understand what death was when they actually died.
My great Aunt Rose, Grandmothers sister, was 111 when she died. She drank vodka on the rocks, smoked 2 packs a week, and cheated at every poker game she ever came close to losing. She died when one night after a family reunion where she had drank to much. She made it home drunk and then locked her keys in her car and froze to death after she fell asleep on her back porch looking at Lake Michigan. Her will had her buried next to her husband who had died at 50 with a deck of cards in her pocket.
Both my mother's parents are still alive and I'm very thankful for that. They both have some pretty amazing stories about people they knew from decades ago that seem like they could be made up at this point. Both of them know two separate people who accidentally cut off the tips of their noses while shaving during an airstrike.
I literally discovered What Remains of Edith Finch from Joseph Anderson's video. I'm glad to know that a channel I watch holds interest in some of the same content as me.
Death of family members hasnt affected me, but death of relationships with exes have to the point where years after I still can't move on and keep getting stuck in life.
there is a death close to me I still haven't worked through. it hasn't felt real yet. this game is a masterpiece and to be honest you don't lose much of anything watching this first so if you haven't played it, let this be your sign
"It's funny, the day you lose someone isn't the worst. At least you've got something to do. It's all the days they stay dead." - The Doctor
Nothing better than doctor who
The part with the fish factory really destroyed me emotionally.
Yeah, that fucked me up.
@KvAT same! During the economic crisis I lost my office job and had to take up a dead end packaging job in a noisy factory for about 3 years...I spend all those days zoned out just like lewis
Magic of direction
god that one makes me tear up just thinking about it, i think it’s significant that that one was so emotional because edith was genuinely close to him in her life so he wasn’t just a story passed down to her through generations, although ediths son didn’t know him personally so maybe my analysis is wrong🤷♂️
Dawn's/Edith's death destroyed me emotionally. Every mother has a fear of not being there to raise the child they literally sacrificed their life to push out. Im 28 with a 6yr girl. When she was 4, I got sick twice within 6mo. Gallbladder became cancerous and then I almost died from Sepsis. Thanks to my mother not taking care of her body, I inherited the repercussions of her self neglect. I suffer from gastrointestinal bleeding, insomnia and PTSD from an extreme amount of trauma no one should go through within a 27yr span. Like Dawn my body is starting to breakdown from the stress and like Edith, I'm trying to give all I can teach and protect my child from the trauma my family participated in giving me and watched me endure from outside forces. I had the type of mom your hear qout on lifetime movies. That mom who, instead of protecting, attacks and blame her own child for the bf/husband being sexually inappropriate towards them.
My great uncle had lost a finger on his job (it was on a truck/van or something) and *apparently* he thought it would be *funny* to return home and say (to his wife) “I seem to be forgetting something... ah! Here it is!” while pulling his severed finger from his pocket. I think my great aunt fainted.
This was the same man who would give out marshmallows on Christmas and call them “snowman poop”.
What a genius, he's the final boss of dad jokes
This reminds me of my great grandfather, he was a steelworker and lost an alarming number of fingers, I think he was missing 3 fingers and a thumb.
Anyways, when I was a kid I asked him how he lost all of them and if it hurt, like you do when you're a kid, he told me that he lost his pinky because he was picking his nose and sneezed. I miss him a lot and I think about that story a lot and it always makes me laugh.
My grandpa had a workshop full of fake prank devices. My favorite one was the rotary wall phone, which was wired to a button hidden under his desk. When he pushed the button, the phone would ring, and he’d ask you to pick it up for him. When you picked up the phone, it would start blaring stereotypical eccentric football/soccer newscasters into your ear.
I think that part of what stuck out to me about What Remains of Edith Finch was that there was never a clear answer as to whether the family was cursed or not. The game makes the point that even though death is commonplace and even normal, we tend to act as if it isn't. In the case of the Finches, they chose to believe that there was a curse placed on them. But the reality is that people are impermanent beings. The Finches were "cursed" to die from the start. We all are. We cannot live forever. But even if we can't, it doesn't matter because we get the chance to live. Life is special because it comes to an end.
I think the ending made it pretty clear that the curse or supernatural never excisted
My family has had so much death and other issues lately. And yet I wouldn't say that we're cursed. That's just silly.
If you want an answer to that question, watch “the villain of Edith Finch” by Joseph Anderson.
there is no curse. For the most part its accidental/human error
Being cursed to die from the start is pretty based
That bit about not feeling true mourning and grief struck a personal note. I've had the same problem, and always connected it with my autism in my head, but maybe it's more universal than that, directly connected with reading about and seeing 'proper' mournings in media? You're the first person I've seen talk about it, anyway, so thank you for that.
Genuinely lovely comment. There are a lot of events that have social expectancies surrounding them, but death is definitely one of the weirdest. There aren't really any chances to ~practice~ it, so especially for the first couple times it happens, we can only base our behavior on the representations of it we've seen.
I can relate. It is so bizarre, this feeling that you don't know what's expected. I lost an uncle who was pretty close to the family, but what triggered sadness in me is seeing his wife crying at the funeral. I relate more by empathy to the people left alive than for the loss itself.
Same in movies, if a character I'm attached to dies, I don't flinch, but as soon as I reaction from the relatives, I feel deeply sad.
I only had my first real funeral in the last month or so. I had no idea what to expect. I was sort of vacant, just not wanting to be around. Catching up with family I hadn't seen in years, eating the little triangle sandwiches.
And then they brought the urn out. Everything clicked. This was Big Grandma, she could beat Ocarina of Time in a single night. She met Cassius Clay, who paid for her and my dad's meal. She tried to call me a week before she died, but I was at work and it was too busy.
And now it's all back.
Im fifteen and was at a funeral last week there wasn't a body so I felt weird and alien more a lunch gathering especially to the more removed friends like my mum
Yeah, for me it didn't feel real until the coffin came out in the funeral.
My half-brother on my father's side died when I was a kid. I saw him once in a year at most - my mother saw him even less. Yet she cried so much for him when she got the news, while my eyes stayed dry. I hated myself for it for so long, I just couldn't understand. I loved him, I did, so why...?
Years after that, I played Brothers: A tale of two sons and cried until I had a panic attack. I realized then that all the tears I couldn't cry for my brother were there.
Everyone deals with grief differently. What Remains of Edith Finch knows this better than anyone. Thank you for your thoughtful analysis.
Thanks for sharing. I have a similar story. I am the first of the 12 grandchildren my beloved grandmother had. She wouldn't admit it in front of others but among my mom, aunts, and uncle, it was known and accepted that I was her favorite grandchild. And in return she was one of my favorite family members. Yet when she died after an unsuccessful heart bypass, I was the only one who didn't cry. I felt terrible about it. I questioned myself and my ability to feel emotion. I constantly wondered if I was a sociopath. I wanted to cry, after all I felt very sad...or at least I think I did? I watched my family grieve and I pretended, or better yet, acted like they did. Even though I didn't genuinely have those emotions. To me she was gone. There was nothing that could be done about it. As a result I remembered her for the great times she brought our family, but that's it. No overwhelming sadness, no crying for hours on end, no locking myself in my room alone. I still worry, to this day, if there's something wrong with me. The most terrifying thought I ever have is that when my mom and or dad pass on, that I won't cry for them either, and my remaining family will think I'm heartless and cold, just like they did back when my gma passed. And the scariest part is that maybe, just maybe, they'll be right.
@@jobieheiser443 everyone processes emotion differently, and that’s okay dude. there’s nothing wrong with you, i felt the exact same thing when my first cat died, everyone in the house was in tears and i didn’t cry for months, and then one night i thought about him and literally cried for almost 8 hours, got it all out and now i’m good :)
I know that this comment is pretty old, but it really hit home with me.
My older sister died pretty recently. We had always been fairly close, but we had also been on rocky terms since she moved out. Her death was sudden and horrible, but not surprising. When I heard about it I cried for hours, but then not really again after. The only thing I had was a heart that ached so, so much. My mom still cries for her everyday, and my dad cried for her more than me- even though I arguably knew her better than either of them.
A month after her funeral, I blamed Brothers as well. I wasn’t expecting how it ended, and the empty side of my controller reminded me so much of how I missed her. I cried for the rest of the way through, and then after as well. I haven’t cried again since, but I know not to hold it against myself.
I can totally relate
After my dog passed, my therapist explained to me what grief was like, because unlike my family, I wasn't broken by her death, I loved her so so much, but she wasn't my dog, she was my parents dog, my brother and my sister's dog, we got her when I was in the 1st grade, I was tiny and whilst she was part of my life, and I cried when I found out, I didn't feel normal with how quickly I got over it.
My therapist explained the 5 stages of grief, Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. Basic stuff I'd heard before, but then he told me something I wasn't aware of, we don't just pass these stages one by one until it's over with, we can bounce between them, we can skip and hop over them, we can be fine one second and angry the next, I did grieve, but it was faster than my family, because of my own experiences.
"Grow accustomed to the belief that death is nothing to us, since every good and evil lie in sensation. However, death is the deprivation of sensation. Therefore, correct understanding that death is nothing to us makes a mortal life enjoyable, not by adding an endless span of time but by taking away the longing for immortality."- Epicurus
Platon was right, goddammit. If everyone would learn philosophy, society would be way better.
thank you Hunter x Hunter 2011 Dickriding Association
"Most don't spend their time in graveyards as children"
Well. Fortunately (or unfortunately, to some) I spent a lot of time in graveyards.
My childhood involved a lot of burials, funerals and years of memorial services.
Deaths of aunt's, uncles, cousins, grandparents (or "grand aunt/uncle" to westerners), nieces, nephews and so on. Was a common occurrence.
Car accidents, fires, carbon monoxide, suicide, murder, medical malpractive, childbirth, underlying health issues and freak animal/insect attacks.
I grew up, in a setting were we understood death as a natural thing. Come together to help the family, give them support. Mourn as collective community, and so on.
So for me. Death can come at any time. It's always there, and I'm not scared. Because in the end, I'm going to die anyway. Why fret about it or leaving behind a "legacy"?
It's a natural part of life
This was a genuinely beautiful analysis. Your personal anecdotes really resonated with the overall idea of the game. I think we prepare, mystify and almost idolize death to a point that there is an expectation of how it will be when it happens. However, in truth, it is a much more understated and quiet affair that emotionally we don't react with in grandiose displays of grief or remorse. I felt that while playing but you really put into words that feeling perfectly. That's my ramble over haha, great content keep it up!
Both of my grandmother's died on the day of their husbands funerals. When I tell that story I think of the unimaginable grief I felt of finding out the matriarchs of my family had died on a day that was already so sad. But when I tell the story to others, people hear a story of someone who was so in love that they couldn't live without their husband. I think that's the version I will tell to my future children
i think i have about the same problem with grief - i really loved my grandmother, she was nothing but nice to me and while she may have been strange, she wasnt a horrible person. but i didn't really feel much when she died a few years ago. i got to visit her house, while my mother and auntie tried to figure out what to do with the leftover money, and how to sell the house. i was most concerned with the cool chocolate pizza i got.
i also once lived next to a somewhat elderly woman whose name i cant remember. she'd let me come over sometimes, and we'd chat, and like the child that i was at the time, i'd carefully play with some of the decorations while i was over. she was nice.
but i don't remember feeling much when she died. i don't even know if i knew that she died. i haven't spoken to the new neighbours in years.
the thing that frightens me the most about my parents dying in the future is the change in routine. currently, i talk to them daily, and rely on them for my wellbeing, since i'm legally recognized as disabled due to being autistic. if either of them died, half of the people i talk to in person are just... gone. and now one parent has to do all of the work, which i honestly don't feel comfortable asking them to do.
if both of them died, i'd likely have to move in with my auntie and uncle. i don't trust myself to be able to take care of this house alone if i can barely take care of myself. and, as an autistic person who gets frightened just by yearly holidays, that'd be Really Fucking Scary.
...
this?? got long and i don't know where i was going with it. but uh... similar hat, i guess
-i think the most grief i ever felt at a death was when my cat died tbh,, he was very old and very kind, i still miss him-
2021 edit: after abt a year to Think, idk how much of this i was right about. i mean?? it's true i didn't feel a lot about my grandmother dying, i still don't remember if i felt anything about my neighbour dying, i still think a large part of my fear of my parents dying is my fear of change, and i still think the most grief i've felt so far was when my cat died. idk, i just think the deal w/ my parents is more complicated. i'm bad at putting names to my feelings so idk if this is a "well looks like this whole comment is obselete lol" update or more of a "this still kind of holds true but a bit differently" way................... all i know is that when my aunt caught The Plague i Was concerned, but fuck if i know to what degree. (she got better it's ok)
also i think i could be self-sufficient if it came to it actually. it'd be really hard to adapt to though
_Going to copy and past the comment I wrote above:_
I can relate. I felt something as soon as I heard the news of my grandfather's death, but it wasn't the uncontrollable sadness I was expecting, it was more a feeling of detached reality - like watching aliens invading the planet on the news. I simply put the thought away and continued my day normally.
When I got home I forced myself to think properly about it, and then cried my eyes out, but that only lasted a couple of minutes. I felt I couldn't mourn properly afterwards, so I got busy and wrote a speech. When I later visited my relatives, I was sad, but only out of empathy for them. I could sense their distress, and wanted to help somehow, so I tried to project an upbeat lightness and affection, to brighten the mood, which I think did help somewhat. But I was worried all the time that someone would misinterpret my optimistic smile as a sign that I didn't care enough. I just felt inappropriate.
My grandfather died during surgery, and although the outcome was unexpected, the risks were known, so we had one final talk just before he went under, and I consider it a decent goodbye. He went peacefully. It was similar with my grandmother, just one year after. I visited her in person while she was hospitalised, but healthy of mind. I wish I could've been more with them, especially in their final days, but I'm at peace with their deaths, so I don't feel any sadness. All I feel is an emptiness, a bittersweet melancholy, because I treasure the moments I've spent with them, but I know the memories will only fade away.
But it was very different with my dog, Jolie. She developed an enlarged heart, which meant that whenever she got excited her lungs filled with fluid and she couldn't breath well. She always had a young spirit and loved to play, and any visitors would bring her great joy, so when those things started causing her pain, it was hard for her. Every time I visited, which was not often enough, I was afraid I was going to trigger her death. She started having crises at night, and had to take emergency injections.
One night her heart was beating so loud that it woke my mother (a heavy sleeper), who then hurried with my father to the pet hospital the vet had recommended for an emergency. But the hospital was far away, and it took forever to get there. Every minute felt like it could be the last, and caused more distress to everyone in the car. Jolie started to suffocate, very slowly, and it must have been horrible. I can only imagine how it felt for her, not understanding the situation, why she was being carried away somewhere, when she needed the comfort and familiarity of home, and only feeling the stress, the fear, the pain. But when they finally arrived, the hospital was closed, and no one was there.
They didn't know of any other hospitals, so they called everyone they knew, desperate for alternatives. Eventually they found another one, but they had to backtrack most of the way, and by then it was too late. Jolie died on my mother's arms. They tried to revive her at the hospital, but it was just too late. Next time I saw her, only her ashes were left.
When my mother told me that story, after they'd spent the rest of the night crying together, it just broke me. It still makes me tear up whenever I remember it. It's not that I loved my dog more than my grandparents, it's just the circumstances. Last time I saw her, I didn't even give her a goodbye hug (afraid of causing her excitement). I had no way to communicate that no matter how far I was, I still thought of her, I still loved her. I wasn't there for her in her final moments, not in any way. And her final moments were spent in suffering. It wasn't a good death.
why is everyone autistic nowadays
@@ifrazali3052 damn i dunno maybe it's because we actually have the knowledge and tools to diagnose autism these days, idk just a thought
"The death of one is a tragedy. The death of millions is just a statistic" - Brian Warner.
I always thought Stalin said that ._.
Edith Finch was one of the most unique, continually surprising games I've ever played, and by far the most creative use of the interactive medium for storytelling. I worried at first that the terrible scenes of death were merely morbid for the sake of morbidity, but the shape of the whole became clear by the end.
The part about not feeling much mourning when people close to you pass hit home hard, I've had many family members pass, ones that I knew pretty well, but I never really felt anything and it felt wrong.
Around a year ago now, my close online friend passed away from cancer. It was the first time I felt extreme grief at someone close to me passing, and I still have a hard time dealing with it. The thought that she's gone and I can't go and just pop into her DM's on discord and say hi feels horrible. It feels weird that an online friend's passing causes me more pain than all the people in my family that I knew in real life passing did. Listening to this essay made me break down crying thinking about all that again, I miss her.
Maybe it was the bond I had shared with her in the space we shared, we were both moderators on a discord server. The staff team there feels like a small family, and it feels like we share a deep bond with each other. She joined staff in the same generation that I did, and I think that shared bond is what made it so painful.
Accepting death doesn’t mean you won’t be devastated when someone you love dies. It means you will be able to focus on your grief- unburdened by the existential questions of “why do people die?” Or “why is this happening to me?”
Death isn’t happening to you.
Death is happening to us all.
- Caitlin Doughty, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
My grandfather died very suddenly when I was 15. I remember the exact moment I found out, my mother had picked me up from school and we were going to pick up my little siblings before we went to the hospital. We were almost to their school when my mom got a call from my dad telling us Grandpa had died. I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed and after a few minutes I just. Stopped crying.
I didn't cry at his funeral (held on my little siblings' 13th birthday, I always feel like I need to emphasize that), I didn't cry when he wasn't there for my 16th birthday the next month, or when he wasn't there for Easter or Christmas or anything. I've always felt so guilty that I just stopped crying. This is the man who baptized me and taught me how to play chess and let me babble about Warrior Cats for hours at a time. I wanted him to be the one to perform my wedding when I got married someday.
It's taken me a while to deal with how grief works. I grieve differently than a lot of other people. I think I realized that I needed to be strong for my little siblings. I'm tearing up now as I type this and I'm still not sure if it's because I miss my grandfather or if I feel guilty for not missing him like everyone else does.
Sorry for the ramble, it just kinda came out. Excellent video as always, thanks for making it.
I felt something similar when my sister died. I was 7 when she passed and when I look back on when my mom told me the news I just remember feeling...nothing much about it. I just watched cartoons and played around like everything was normal while my family was breaking down all around me.
I barely remember her and all that I know about her is stuff my parents have told me. I can’t even remember what her voice sounded like. So thanks for making this, it really helped.
I've heard people say voices are actually the first thing you forget...? I don't know how true it is. But... if that helps.
I wonder if the reason why we feel like we should make such a big showing of grief is because of the Victorian Era. When Queen Victoria's husband died, she mage a HUGE deal about his death, to the point where she wore black (mourning clothes) until the day she died. And since the Victorians practically worshiped Victoria, they emulated this standard of making a huge show of grieving, so much so that this standard was passed down for generations, even making its way across America subconsciously through the descendants of colonizers.
Hmm I donno, I suppose I'm just talking nonsense. But in any case great video! Edith Finch is one of my favorite games. X3
During her mourning (likely because of its seclusion) Victoria lost a lot of popularity, though by the end of her reign was less despised
The English started colonizing in 1584 with the failed Roanoke Colony, then really kicked off when the Virginia (London) Company settled Jamestown in 1607. The Declaration of Independance was signed in 1776, and Queen Victoria was born in 1819. While she did agressively expand the British empire, the areas she subjugated had their own cultures and mourning practices. Canada, maybe, but doubtful.
@@totally_not_a_bot Thanks for responding! I'm actually a history buff so this is pretty interesting. X3
@@Ehh97 You're welcome, stranger! Glad I could feed your curiosity
I think it might be more the other way around. If you read older European literature - really, anything from before the past few centuries, although especially ancient and medieval literature - grief is so much more of a... Spectacle. If you read the Greek and Roman epics, someone is wailing with grief every chapter. I am currently reading the Odyssey, and the amount of lamentation is, from a modern perspective, startling. So I suppose the question is less about when we started making a show of grief, but rather, when did we stop?
the idea that we take dark themes more seriously and respect them more than lighter themes is SO TRUE. it's a lot like how a negative opinion of something is often seen as more important, valuable, intelligent than a positive or neutral one.
also yesss Joseph Anderson's essay on "the villain of edith finch" is fantastic
This video hits really hard for me. When my grandmother passed away due to cancer, I was there in the hospital. I got to watch her die and even when stepping outside, watching my mom break down and cry I couldn't shed a single tear. Looking back on it I never knew why. I love her so much and she was there for me when I needed her. But this video helped me. Grief is different for everyone. Of course I knew that but after watching this it put it into perspective. It doesn't have to be me crying to be grief. Me being there alone and being in my thoughts was enough and knowing she passed away and remembering her was my way of handling it. Only now do I cry when remembering her and understanding what she truly meant to me.
But the most conflicting thing I had with myself for the longest time was when my online friend, went into a heart surgery but didn't make it. Somehow, I cried more than I had for my grandmother. I don't know if it's the different relationships I had established with the two of them that made me view grief differently or something. But I still don't know why. And I wish I knew.
Yours and Joseph Anderson about this game are forever gonna be in my playlist. I've gone through recent deaths just this past month, which is both bizarre and routine. Thanks for a down-to-earth look of this game and its theme.
underrated content, you deserve more. Good Work.
😳
This video feels like... like a hug at the end of a funeral, not a goodbye hug, just a recognition. That you'll keep Being. Thank you, Jacob.
To me, the way What Remains of Edith Finch deals with death, mourning and the loss of a family member and the message given to one at the very end in Ediths note is one of the best in video game history. That makes it one of the best games I have ever played and the first time experience a chilling one to say the least.
The memorial on Walter's grave stone. When I peered closer and saw what it was it had me openly crying. That one really struck me.
It’s interesting to read everyone’s comments on this video. I see a lot of people saying that they relate to Jacob about how he felt when his friend passed and I can relate in some ways. When I was really young my great grandma passed. She was a huge part of my life up to that point, but when she passed I remember standing around my family at the hospital and seeing them cry. I didn’t feel the need to cry but I did anyways because everyone else was. I didn’t understand all of the nuance of the word “death”, I was just a kid. All I understood was the fact that she was gone.
My grandma on my dads side passed away almost a year ago and so I remember her death and the process much better than my great grandma passing. I was definitely upset. It was weird thinking she would be gone, I never really realized she would die I guess and I was sad that I’d never get more time with her. I also had time to process her death though. We knew she was dying for a couple months before she actually passed and that gave me time to think over it. I also spent a lot of time with my family in these months which gave me a support net of sorts. I can’t say I was completely breaking down but it effected me for sure.
Now, where my relationship with death gets a bit more complicated is with my own friend passing away. She died when we were young (like 10). It was an unexpected car crash right outside her house which was in the neighborhood I lived in. I couldn’t process the fact that someone who was almost the same age as me and lived so close to me could also die. The hardest thing about her death, though, was the fact that nothing really did change. Her family moved away, I never went to the funeral (I couldn’t stand the thought of seeing her body in a coffin) and so my life just went on as usual. It didn’t really affect any one I knew personally beside for affecting my mom a bit, and I realized this. Nothing changed. That terrified me. I couldn’t face the fact that if she had just moved away unannounced my life would have played out the same way. I basically denied her death for years. I knew that it had happened but I never confronted it. The only times I ever confronted it was when it got to be to much and I would have emotional break downs. That lasted for about 2 years and than I finally started working out the whole thing.
This was long, but I thought I’d share my experience. It just goes to show that everyone experiences things differently. There’s no right way to grieve. It doesn’t have to be long and drawn out and depressing but sometimes it is exactly that. I think that media shows that narrative more because it’s more interesting to watch. It wouldn’t be as interesting of a story if someone got over a death easier or quicker.
I don't know if anyone else does this but I feel like I mourn in snippets.
My grandfather passed away when I was 8 years old. He suffered several strokes and was in the ICU for about three months before he passed away. I don't remember how long he was there for. The only thing I really remember is the way that every visit jerked me in a new direction. The first time I was told he wouldn't survive a week. The next they said he would recover fully. Three days later he was in a coma. Five days more and I was able to give him one of my stuffed animals while he was eating macaroni and smiling at me. Too weak to move. Standing up to give me a hug. Another coma. Moved out of the ICU. The back and forth gave me nightmares and still will if I think on it too long.
When he died, I cried. Once. I cried when my aunt let us into the room and I saw his dead body on the bed and didn't kmow what to do. That night I went home and slept better than I had in weeks. I had an answer. I didn't like it, but I had it.
I didn't cry for another 8 months. He was a big part of my life but I processed that loss in snippets. I cried a little when my grandmother moved to California to live with my aunt and I got his bed to sleep in. I cried a little when I called his phone number and didn't hear his voice asking for a message. I cried when I found one of his old mugs in my cupboard.
My mom told me I could cry all the time for the first month and couldn't understand why I didn't. I was sad and I missed him but I had to confront my loss piece by piece. An old drawing he pinned on the fridge. One of the ceramic birds on a shelf. A picture of his chair.
I don't think I'll ever be done mourning. I don't think I'm meant to be. But I feel stable and I can think of him fondly and at the end of the day, no matter what I've been told, I feel like I mourn in an okay way.
If anyone else mourns like me, you definitely aren't alone. And if anyone else mourns in a way that people don't respect or consider weird or wrong: You mourn however the fuck you need to. Death is tied to life and coping with it will never be as uniform as people want it to be. You'll get through it one day at a time.
I deeply, deeply relate to how you feel about grieving. I am the same. when my grandparents died, when my uncle died...
I felt ok... there's Nothing worse then people expecting you to feel a certain way. nothing more idiotic and cruel than forcing someone to feel sad, "because that's whats people are supposed to do!" there's nothing wrong with you if you don't Grieve.
maybe because there's a certainty that oneday.. I will follow.
I noticed that I experience heavy emotions in a delay... at the moment it happens I feel nothing at all...but eventually the emotion will float to the surface.
that was nice. reminds me of the place in my heart held by a series of unfortunate events, that always remarked on the tragic nature of its stories, but was also full of wisdom and tenderness and bizarre unexpected details that helped me internalise bad things happening as an inevitable part of life, knowing the context of tragedy and all the little details makes me appreciate it as a whole, from beginning to end, not a random happening of only chaos and confusion, but the beauty in a fire that took careful gathering of wood precise application of friction the gift of light and warmth, not just a death...
Series of Unfortunate Events
When my grandpa died a year ago I thought the rest of my family was insane for not being upset about it. I was randomly bursting into sobs for the entire day like my body had no connection at all to my mind. I kept thinking of him giving my siblings and I rides in the wagon hitched to his tractor, through tall grass and fields and fireflies. And that man was GONE. How could he possibly not exist anymore?
Last weekend I visited my grandma. Our visit was nice, though we didn't have much to talk about. She lives in a nursing home and can hardly stand on her own, so she spends most of her day sitting in a sofa in her room She joked often about how frustrated she was to still be alive, and it made sense. Literally all she has left to do is wait to die, granted with caring family and relative comfort. (Ironically, catching COVID-19 didn't affect her much at all. One of the luckiest 99-year-olds around who was totally asymptomatic.)
I somehow understand now why the rest of my family wasn't upset by my grandpa's death. Traditions of wagon rides in fields didn't end when my grandpa died, they were already long over. I grew up and my grandparents grew old. It's not always a tragedy for things to end, because new things begin anyway.
I don't know what my point here is or how it relates to the video. I just needed to write this down somewhere.
0:51 oh my god this reminds me of a story about my grandpas dog when he was a kid. So one day when his whole family was out of the house there was some sort of gas explosion or something and the house exploded. The dog apparently got flung all the way across the street and was totally fine
That closest I’ve been to mourning was when my grandma died I didn’t cry I just wished that I could’ve seen her one last time while she was healthy
One of my favorite games of all time made justice by a amazing video.
I like how you focus on how What Remains of Edith Finch normalizes death and how life continues to move on for those left behind -- that's a takeaway I haven't heard before about this game and it helps put the story it's telling in a more realistic, positive light. I appreciate both that and the conversations that your essay has inspired here in the comments.
Man, you know how to squeeze a tear out my eye!
When my grandmother died i tried not to show the weakness i had felt afterwards i eventually accepted her death and moved on. I am at a point in my life when im going to start seeing more and more people die around me, but i cant ready myself for it and i can only wait for it to be over.
I'd like to offer a perspective from the other side of the fence. Where others here often have difficulty grieving and allowing themselves to grieve either through neglect of the emotion or through inability to connect with it, I deal with it nearly all the time, even when people I don't know very well pass away.
My friend, let's call him Dan, has had a difficult life. His father left him when he was 4, because his mother was a stripper that became pregnant. Dan's parents only married because he was on the way and sometime after he turned four, they finally split, a long and torrid relationship leaving Dan very scarred by the actions of both parents. Despite this, Dan's mom was a very loving and kind person, and saw him as nothing less than the light of his world. She was immensely cool for a 30-something mom in the 2000s. I came over to play Xbox with Dan one day in 4th grade, only to find his mom couch-gaming in the living room on her big ass 56" TV, something that Dan wasn't allowed to do. She had beaten a Gears of War title, she had been playing since Dan left for school in the morning. Needless to say, she was pretty awesome.
Then the unthinkable happened. She was found in her car, dead from, of all things, an aortic dissection. If you're unaware, an aortic dissection is almost exactly what it sounds like. Your aorta tears, completely randomly and sometimes for no reason at all, and the bleed is too big for the body to staunch, and you bleed to death internally while being completely unaware of what's wrong. It just feels like a sudden and rapid lack of oxygen, like you're breathing fine but nothing's happening. Then you pass out.
I attended her funeral. I only met the woman three times, but at the funeral with Dan, who I went with purely to support, and nothing else, I found myself bawling almost as much as him. I looked at him and said "I know I don't have the right to be here or mourn." He simply responds with "It's okay man, it's not like you can control it."
All of this is to say that I oftentimes show up to funerals to support family members or friends in their time of need, and I find myself mourning the loss of people I barely knew. It feels presumptuous in its own way. Like I said before, do I even have the right to mourn the death of someone I barely knew? Death saddens me, like it does most people, but because of the fact that I see it not as just the loss of a person and their past, and present, but also their future as well. So many conversations never had because someone was taken too soon, so many memories left unmade because their time came too quickly. So much left undone.
But ultimately, I feel I'm better for it. I feel more connected to the people I care about when I mourn with them, to give them support by joining in. I know, like I said, it sounds presumptuous, doesn't it?
I had a friend of mine from high-school die. It's been 6 years, and I don't think I've ever cried about it until today. For a long time, I always just felt disconnected from it. I didn't know how to feel about it. I still don't know. But today I cried. I miss my friend. I miss you, Jeanette.
This video of all of yours has pull some heart strings. I lost too many young family and friends in the last couple years and have grown so numb, to numb to mourn. But this put a apple in my throat and maybe even some acception. Thank you.
I can relate to your perception of grief. When my father died nearly 10 years ago I didn't want to deal with the situation at all. It was pretty similar to the first stage of grief according to the Kübler-Ross model. I knew that he was dead but I didn't want to feel sad about it, I didn't want to grief. At his funeral it struck me for a moment and I cried for a short time but that was it. Other than that his death left me untouched. I always felt guilty about my lack of sadness and I thought that I was supposed to feel much worse - but I didn't. I guess grief is just different for every person.
so i'm returning to this video after a while, and after finally playing edith finch myself - it took three years of owning it to be "in the right headspace" for it. and in the end it was a much more comfortable experience than i expected, and i'm still glad i waited to play it.
your bit about not knowing if you're grieving correctly, if you're experiencing "true" grief was so memorable, and i'm tempted to offer my own perspective: the only times i've felt i was grieving "correctly", where i was absolutely enveloped in grief at the "appropriate" moment, it was for people i'd started mourning while they were still alive. sudden deaths absolutely wreck your ability to respond accordingly, and sometimes you only ever find yourself able to mourn them in your own way weeks, months, years down the line.
This was surprisingly comforting, thank you
This is probably the only video essay that's gotten me this close to actual tears. And all of your other videos are equally high-quality. I'm really glad I found this channel.
Danke!
I literally love this game and exploring all the little parts of it
One of the best videos I’ve watched in a while. You handled the subject greatly and connected it to Edith Finch incredibly. I adore your content Jacob
The most "memorable" deaths to me are the one of the baby and the one of the guy working at the fish factory
The fish factory stuck with me
@@robvenom1058 the fish factory is very relatable
Is it that people don't know how to mourn, or due to the fast pace of modern society, aren't given the time to mourn? How many times have people been told of a family or friend passing... and just stayed at work, or school. and gone the next day, and the next. or decided to distract themselves with something else like social media or games or netflix.
It's a natural response to push the emotion away and try to hold on to your normal routine
The part about your friend's passing and how you handled it was great. Although I haven't had an experience of someone who I was very close to, I have had to attend funerals of other relatives who I didn't know all that well, along with several animal deaths. Both those experiences and just other mourning experiences just have never really effected me. For example, when we put our (14?) year old dog to sleep, my Mom, and even my Stepdad who had only known him for a few years were balling their eyes out. I've known that dog my whole life, and haven't shed a single tear over the past few months. I knew, or at least thought that that reaction was not normal, or maybe even wrong, but hearing someone else like that was reassuring in a way.
Thank you so much for writing about this subject. The topic hit a cord for me.
The first person that I deeply, actively mourned and left me severely deregulated was when my best friend at the time fled to Turkey to marry the person she loved the most. She fled from her parents, from the Dutch culture, from her trauma and her pain at the cost of everything to be with a man in a relationship that turned toxic.
At the time, I understood her reason why. Now that I am older, I understand it even better. Yet nothing no pen can describe the feeling of having a first day uni and finding out that she isnt there. I cannot describe how I felt when I called the head of the department and her telling me she quit and fled.
3 months of radio silence. I was able to write her E-mails but the answers were few and far in between. At some point she returned to the Netherlands for a little while. I visited her then and again, nothing could describe how it was to hear how she left home. That she was dressed in her work clothes, had breakfast with her father and left with only her working bag and her wallet. Her parents took away her pasport so she couldnt flee.
So she left with little cash, a workbag with the essentials, lied to everyone and went to the airport to catch a plane with a ticket her fiance bought for her.
I had no idea how to grapple with the situation. I kept getting flashbacks, for months, years even I had the urge to call and text. The feeling left when I accepted that I didnt want to share my life with her again. Because when we did share, the burns she left would take months to heal.
She wasnt safe. And accepting that was the hardest thing I could ever do.
bro i just discovered you and have been binging your videos so hard and i simultaneously can’t believe but also of course you have an edith finch video, one of my favorite games of all time. i love what you do so much
Same dude, I’ve been binging all of his videos after I saw the one about caves
@@jlin592 the caves one is so fuckin good!!
You're gonna be big. I just know it.
Glad I stumbled upon your channel while the comments are still visible among the sea of comments that will one day swarm your videos.
I'm bad at dealing with death too, the last death I really mourned and processed was of a dog I had run over when I was 10 or so.
Since then I think I only cry when a death has a soundtrack accompanying it.
And I feel so sorry for that.
I hope I can deal with this problem before my closest relatives die.
I feel sorry too, last time I cried was probably the most I cried. And it was over a comic made by someone in the Touhou fandom (Osana Reimu). I cried more over that than I did when my great grandmother died, I was young but I still feel bad that I cried more over a fictional character than a person I actually knew in real life and cared for. The character couldnt care for me, yet why did I care for them?
I feel the same. His channel is going to explode soon and I'm craving it lol. On the other side, I think it's better how you deal with death, not crumbling down doesn't mean it doesn't affect you, somehow I think it's very healthy. More power to you, brother.
Anyone know what the song at 6:38 is? It's such a lovely melody and it keeps bugging me that I can't find it
I played the game and I think that is part of the "level"
So, try to search in soundtracks
Was bothering me too, but I found it. It's called "Music" by Kevin Penkin. It's from the soundtrack of a different game called "Florence".
@@kiyoku_ You're a godsend! Thank you!
@@cheerie817 Glad to help! :)
@@kiyoku_ Oh damn, it's the same guy from the Made In Abyss OST, nice
I think your problem with true grief/mourning is actually a sign of a calmer relationship with death. We cry and mourn and sulk to release our emotions, and to express a feeling of tragic injustice. But if death is a natural coda to life and something that brings peace, why would we cry? What injustice has been committed? All things die, and that's okay. We aren't owed the presence of the deceased but they are owed their rest. To beg and cry at the foot of their graves is a disrespect to the life they have already lived.
I relate a lot to what you said about not being able to mourn properly, not feeling the grief as expected. My grandma, who helped raise me, and who I lived with for most of my life, passed last year. Yet it was almost like I couldn't feel the loss. Weeks after it happened I had already started to forget that she was gone. Now that could be my ADHD at work, but the absence of grief at the time, when my father was sobbing his heart out, unsettled me.
My father, aunt, and 3 grandparents, and 3 great grandparents died within about ten years of one another, from about the time I was 12 till about the time I was 22. I don't think I ever once had a "break down crying" moment, but I don't think I've ever stopped mourning them. None of them died in terrible or unexpected ways. My father was young, but even his death didn't surprise me given his life choices. For a while I felt so bad not sobbing the way my mother (at the time, divorced from him) did. But that's just not how grief makes me feel.
There is a very big difference between reading death stories of your ancestors who are gone and have no real connection to and experiencing it to happen to someone close in your own presence.
as someone who is currently in the process of grieving and has played this game and loved it, i can confidently say that there is no single way to grieve and perceive death. humans created customs and expectations around it, but nothing of that matters when death arrives. it plunges you into depths you could never imagine and forces you to face existence and absence alike.
I get what you mean when you say that grief is so often unconventional or “done wrong”. I can attest to the fact that the five stages of grief make no sense, there is no orderly progression of emotions the the wake of someone’s sudden absence.
I can also attest to the “living with it” bit. I lost my father a few years prior and the best way I can describe grief is a pearl. It begins as a irritant, a corrosive, disruptive thing. And slowly, as time goes on, you add layers around it, shiny, pretty layers that add the sweetness to bittersweet absence. I remember watching Spirited Away with my father and I smile, and I don’t think about the weeks before his death. You grow around your grief, you gain the ability to reminisce without sadness, and you make space for the absence. It doesn’t shrink, you just reorganize around it. It is forever a part of you, and it’s not a bad thing.
Jacob, I totally understand what you meant about not having mourned someone's passing yet. My father died when I was 10. I was sad at the time, but I didn't mourn his passing at that time. This wasn't to say my father was not an amazing father, he was. I just didn't mourn his passing then. Life went on and I went on with it. However, about 10 years later, I truthfully mourned my father's death. Being so far removed from the original incident of his death made that a really difficult process. It seemed as if everyone else in my life had finished their mourning and didn't want to relive those feelings simply because I was late to the party. As a result of this it was necessary I mourn differently. I made it my goal to find out as much as I could about my father as just a person. What were his mannerisms? After work, what did he like to do? What things kept him up at night? What goals did he leave unfulfilled? I wanted to find as much of myself in him as I could. It was incredibly difficult to say the least, but I am almost thankful that it happened that way. At 10 years old, I did not truly comprehend what growing up without my father really meant. I would have been mourning what I think I had lost, not what I actually had lost. As an early 20 something, I had real first hand experience about what high school with one parent actually was like and the jealously I felt from my friend's close relationships with their fathers. More importantly, I knew that I would never have my own father to be my lifelong friend once I had grown up and was no longer just his child. I was thankful to have had the opportunity to mourn these things and not just the man that didn't come home one day. It felt a more complete mourning not some half baked child's attempt at feeling the way he was supposed to feel in response to a dead parent.
I don't know what to say man. A lot of your videos really move me but this actually made me cry. Neither sadness nor joy - I don't know why exactly. I guess it might be your awesome rhethoric and the subject matter in relation to my own experience with loved ones dying from illness, accidents, OD's and even in war. I do know that this has somewhat helped me understand what it means to have known a person, truly known, and cope with their eventual demise. The way you deal with death in your videos shows a great understanding of life and although I just watch your videos and we'll probably never meet - which is a shame - know that somehow you're still one of the people I respect the most in my life.
I've struggled with meaninglessness my whole life. That of my own life or the death of those close to me. I've searched for in academia, in a war and in a heroin addiction I'm currently recovering from. I've found a better cure for meaninglessness in your videos, somehow, than in my own life's experiences. Maybe truly understanding what you have to say will help me find meaning in my own experiences. Or maybe I'll learn not to needlessly search for meaning and just accept things as they are, as they happened and as they will play out in the future.
Know that you're a tremendously postivie influence on my life and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for sharing your wisdom here. I'd never thought that somebody I haven't ever met could learn me so much.
Kindest regards,
Your new Patreon, Alexander Jonker.
P.S. excuse me if I made some grammatical or spelling errors, English is not my native language although I speak it very well, it's not perfect. Nothing ever is.
A touching analysis of a charming, touching game. Thank you.
Came to watch this after being reminded that it exists from you on the MinnMax Edith Finch Deepest Dive. "You can only sit shiva so long." What a powerful statement of hope and... normalcy, perhaps? Big fan. :-)
Most emotional part about edith finch for me was when I was in the attic and there was a space ship tow underneath a window facing the bright moon in the night sky. And it made feel so nostalgic being a kid pretending to be in space. And I got super sad and put my controller down having that toy and the moon in front of me, then it started raining outside and I had alot of tears in my eyes. I didnt even have to do anything and that moment holds more weight than alot of games.
Fantastic video, you never dwell on any aspects of the game that don’t add to your point. Edith Finch is such a special experience and this video helped me unpack what it was as a whole.
How are you so good at this? I'm so impressed and jealous at the same time, I've always loved your videos and it has inspired me a lot. Thank you for making this it's beautiful
I was just about to recommend it, but I see Jacob already did. Eh, I'll say it anyway. If you want to watch another (at least in my opinion) equally good video essay that focuses more on the plot of the game, I HIGHLY recommend watching Joseph Anderson's "The Villain of Edith Finch". It is GREAT.
Oh, that's a classic right there. Just a really beautifully made video that made me cry.
i still don't like it much
I have long struggled with not mourning someone's passing till far after. I used to have a song which I would specifically use to just let the waterworks flow. But as I got older even that didn't necessarily do it.
Probably the biggest gut punch for me was around a year after my great grandmother's passing. Not seeing her at the Thanksgiving dinner kinda broke me.
The thing that hits me even more is sometimes I will have dreams where she is back. It's been around 7 years since her passing and to this day I will have dreams that she is alive again at a family gathering and we will talk and talk and talk in the dreams. Sometimes she even acknowledges that she can only be there for a while.
I don't care what your beliefs are on the super natural, but experiences like that where it is definitely her, she's visiting me in the afterlife.
I'm in the same boat with regards to mourning. I never felt like I mourned "the right way" when my father died. I thought there was something wrong with me, or maybe with our relationship, and it is incredible to hear that maybe, just maybe, it's... normal.
I feel like love and grief are the concepts that are not only the most warped by popular media, but where this warping does the most damage. Because especially for the first times, we have completely wrong expectations about what it's like and what it should be like, and as evidenced by quite a few comments here - the discrepancy between expectations and the much less "choreographed" reality causes a lot of hurt and insecurities.
That not being able to cry struck a chord with me as a couple months ago, a dear family friend, a man who had raised me for 8 years while my parents did fuckall, just dropped dead. I haven't once cried about him, theres some inner conflict about that and i didnt even go to his funeral. Maybe it's that the way our brains handle grief is different and people have differing ranges when it comes to grief and emotion in general. Or maybe we're all just psychopaths, who knows. Very strange occurrence but glad to see someone else has experienced it.
It's the old house. It has mind control powers
alternate reading of the house where it fits right into the ones discussed in his video about haunted houses in stories
no but it really does seem kind of an inverse of that, right? a house that doesn't reject humanity, but one that is haunted by an excess of humanity
I watch this channel all the time and I love it, I just finished edith finch and it blew my mind, I looked up some more in depth reviews of other players and found out jacob made a video on the game and I’m kinda loosing my mind
Just re-seeing footage of the game brings up a well of emotions to me. Surprisingly touching game.
Awesome video, this sums up exactly why this game affected me so much.
I feel the exact same way when it comes to properly mourning for someone.
OK..I have no idea why but I cried allot viewing this..
it felt compassionate calming soothing..
sure it was sad from people I for example never played for people who in theory dosent even are real..a cursed yes cause they never experienced such things as life when growing up when becoming more of what they had...
But yet with it all it feels normal natural common and..something that could also be laughed upon..ignored to continue to pass on,
Games media and life in general made me feel and obvious sensation that death and all of this is natural but I do not mean it in a bad way it takes a bunch of time so why should we only now spend it and talk about it and get worried?..
We have so actual many things to live for and somehow just...after watching this made me felt...happy?..with all of the mixtures and words and the sensations that I feel right now the rambles and such
I simply just want to say..
maybe..Thank you?...
For how you delivered this for how and what you gave to me for the things that you have done to me to know this game...THank you so much for what you did anyway
I've been watching most your videos over the past 2 days and honestly I cant wait for you to make more content. You are a fantastic content creator and I'm very excited to see what comes next :)
I have never cried for a relative's death. I feel sadness, sometimes, and I feel akward being there, with other relatives. I loved some of these relatives, I cared for some, but I didn't feel gief. When a friend and her girlfriend were killed in a car accident, it was the same. I felt out of place among their relatives and common friends. 20 hours ago a neighbour lady died of covid, it was shocking, and I feel bad because I have know her for 35 years, her son Heber has been my friend for 35 years. But I don't feel grief.
But I know I will feel devastated if my mother or my niece died. I don't think I could cope with that loss. I hope I die first.
This is only slightly related but I recommend checking out the album Deadwing by Porcupine Tree. It's essentially a ghost story about a man named David who lives a sad life and decides to kill himself for a variety of reasons. It's a piece of artwork that holds a very special place in my heart, but most importantly it handles death in a very specific way that I can't quite explain. It's also an album that I have failed to give a proper analysis/properly explain the story of. Anyways check it out if you like Jacob Gellers content, who knows maybe you'll find your own meaning to the album.
I just love this game. The atmosphere, narrative, and sound track, including much more, makes me get goosebumps. This video feels nostalgic, but the game is only about 1-2 years old! Well done!
Oh man you do videos on all my favourite games! Merry Christmas, much love x
You just made What Remains of Edith Finch my favourite game of all time, thank you.
i grew up in a religion fixated on the idea of immortality, and of gaining eternal life. as a child, i remember asking my dad if we'd ever get sleepy in heaven -- i had yawned a very big yawn and enjoyed it so much and then realized with shattering horror that maybe i wouldn't get to yawn in the afterlife. he said he didn't think we got sleepy or hungry. then what would we DO? i said. i don't remember his answer.
as i got older, death became horrible in contrast to the thing i was supposed to want, the immortality. i held the goal of immortality very close, because that was what one does.
it was very odd when i realized i didn't actually care about what happened to me after i died. it was even odder to realize that i actually want to die, that i wish to stop. maybe not now. i don't particularly want to hasten it. but i'd like to, someday.
i always thought maybe there was something wrong with me. death just isn't....horrifying. it isn't frightening. i don't fear it. i won't mind when it happens. but that's wrong, isn't it? shouldn't i be afraid? shouldn't i be absolutely griefstricken when someone is gone?
edith finch made me feel loved and held in company. it was so lovely to know that i am not alone. i don't need to be afraid, or to hold shame for not being afraid. i can just...be.
What an astonishingly amazing game! It gets you right from the pause menu , where you see the family tree, not giving it much thought initially, but then when you look longer, you start realizing that everyone from that tree but 2, is gone, many at unusually young ages of you do the math. Then you look at the ones in the tree that made it to an older age and start thinking what they might have gone through dealing with these untimely deaths. Even before I reached the mansion, I had a lay of the family plot and the tragedies that it might have endured over the years.
And then when you actually explore the mansion, it starts slowly unfolding the history of the family , merely by presenting you props and environmental cues. You look at the calendar and wonder what happened the day that they stopped updating the calender. You look at the half emptied garage and wonder what happened here. You look at the Chinese take out boxes and wonder when was the last meal that was had here and what caused the family to just up and leave like that. You look at random pictures at the wall, and try to deduce based on their clothing styles and the people in the pictures, which branch of the family tree it might be, what time period it was and whether the picture was taken before or after a tragic death in the family.
And all this,the game makes you do without telling you to. You could just as well ignore all of these cues that are really just out there in the open , and yet you would eventually learn about the family, but if you're curious to know about the family from the get go, it is so much more rewarding.
What an amazing game! What an amazing mechanic to engage the player with the game and actually making you feel like you're Edith!
In our home and religious path we venerate our beloved dead, our ancestors, and we keep them as part of our every day by leaving offerings, talking to them, carrying them with us in the form of jewelry or other means. It makes it feel like the ones we lose are never really lost. They don't really go anywhere even though they no longer have a physical form. This video reminds me of that a lot
I didn’t feel sad after I finished watching this, or existential for anything. It made me feel kind of weird and clean I really felt cool after watching this and the air smelled kind of like flowers
You my friend have a lucky cousin. I mean not to sound rude or anything but a baby flying out of a window in a car crash and somehow landing SAFELY on a cornfield that happened to be nearby, that is some amazing divine luck right there.
Great storytelling again!
personal death story time, because it seems to be a theme here. i've only grieved for one person, which i knew online (a story we'll skip), despite knowing several people in family, and friends of, who have passed. I've grieved for my dog who passed away at 17, and... that's it. i've always felt worse about the effect it carried to other people, and have always done my best to guide _them_ through _their_ mourning.
i think that it's the suffering that comes before and after that hits me, not the event itself. i don't know what that says about me as a person, and maybe it could be attributed to the life i've lived, but... there you have it.
and hey, if you're reading this comment, i hope you're having a good day or night.
The words of Gandalf the Grey in The Fellowship of the Ring really come to mind here:
"All that matters is what we do with the time that is given to us."
We all have a limited amount of time on this world. Make the most of it.
I haven't ever had to go through the death of a "loved one" yet, though my paternal grandmother and maternal grandfather are both dead. My grandmother died when I was 4, my grandfather was when I was 10 or maybe 11. It didn't hit me, ever. My memories of them were severely limited as my grandmother died when I was young, and my grandfather lived 1000km away from me and rarely visited. I have only one memory of them each, for my grandmother, she was having a conversation with my mom I have no idea what about. For my grandfather, I would've been around maybe 2 or 3 years old, I saw a man in an RV that I didn't recognize that I later was helped to recognize as my grandfather.
Its been almost 16 years since my grandmother died, and my grandfather 18 years ago. If you're confused about what i mean, i mean they died when I formed my last memory of them. I couldn't understand death then, so i couldn't understand what death was when they actually died.
My great Aunt Rose, Grandmothers sister, was 111 when she died. She drank vodka on the rocks, smoked 2 packs a week, and cheated at every poker game she ever came close to losing. She died when one night after a family reunion where she had drank to much. She made it home drunk and then locked her keys in her car and froze to death after she fell asleep on her back porch looking at Lake Michigan.
Her will had her buried next to her husband who had died at 50 with a deck of cards in her pocket.
I really need to play this game, just so I can finally watch these videos people I'm subscribed to make.
Haha the good news is that they only take a couple hours at most! Edith Finch is an easy two-sitting game
"We can only sit shiva for so long."
Judaism knows how to do mourning right.
Both my mother's parents are still alive and I'm very thankful for that. They both have some pretty amazing stories about people they knew from decades ago that seem like they could be made up at this point. Both of them know two separate people who accidentally cut off the tips of their noses while shaving during an airstrike.
I literally discovered What Remains of Edith Finch from Joseph Anderson's video. I'm glad to know that a channel I watch holds interest in some of the same content as me.
I never really cried when someone close to me died sure it was sad but there’s just the way thing are and we can’t change that
Death of family members hasnt affected me, but death of relationships with exes have to the point where years after I still can't move on and keep getting stuck in life.
there is a death close to me I still haven't worked through. it hasn't felt real yet. this game is a masterpiece and to be honest you don't lose much of anything watching this first so if you haven't played it, let this be your sign