Note: I've wrestled with posting this for a while, and I've re-written it about four times now. While it It deals with mortality and its onlookers, the ones affected by it peripherally. I don't imagine this post will be for everyone. If you're squeamish about such things, or if the subject just hits too closely, it may be best to skip this one. Normal transmission should return shortly.
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I’ve
talked about this elsewhere on the blog, but I’m bringing it up one more time to illustrate a
point. In 2010, my wife Jess was hospitalised with complications from a MS exacerbation
that came close to ending her life and subsequently put her in rehab for three months while
she learned to walk again. It was during this time that my brother-in-law T and
I started playing a weekly game of Command & Colors: Napleonics (GMT
Games, 2010). I had only been in possession of the game for a month or so before Jess went into hospital.
I was spending my days in the ward and my nights eating toast and not sleeping very much.
T and his wife P – Jess’s eldest sister – had me around a several times for
dinner in those early weeks, mostly to make sure I was looking after myself,
and when Jess was communicative again, she told me I should go have a game with
T one night. So I invited myself over and took my copy of C&C: Napoleonics with me. When offered, T
chose to play the French.
At the
end of our first game (Rolica (French First Position) – 17 August 1808), T told
me I should come over the following week so we can each play the over side. And
that was the start of our nearly sixteen-year Monday night game tradition. Over
those first few months, this was one of the things that helped keep me on an
even keel in the face of a desperate and only sporadically resolving situation.
I bring
this up now because life is a crap buffet, devoid of even the smallest measure
of fairness or justice or consideration. After some months of unwellness,
P was diagnosed with MND. Anyone who has lost
a loved one to this shitty, humourless joke of a condition knows what it does
to the sufferer and to everyone around them, and has my deepest, most profound
sympathy. I’m not going to dwell on it here; that's not my story to tell.
The
other week, when T and I played the Eggmühl, Day 2 (French Right)
scenario, that was a little less than a week after P’s diagnosis. She had been progressively
less well over the previous four months, and we hadn’t seen either of them for
most of that. Both T and P are medical professionals, and quite senior in their respective fields. Neither is under any illusion regarding what is to come. When I got to T’s place for our game, he looked haggard, flat, beaten.
We played
the game. We did not talk much at all before or during the game, except a little
about various moves or tactics, and about the historical situation of the
scenario. For about an hour-and-a-half we were immersed fully in the challenge to
hand.
After
the game, as we were packing up, T seemed less deflated, more his old self. We
talked. I asked him some questions about what comes next, how P was handling the
situation, how their kids (both adults now) are taking it all, and he answered
everything with full statements, rather than vagaries and platitudes. For eighty-something
minutes we’d taken a little vacation from the weight of everything bearing down
on the family, but upon T most of all. It was still there when we returned, but
he was a little rested and better prepared to face it.
In her excellent book, Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World*,
author Jane McGonigal relates a story from Book 1 (Part 94) of Herodotus’s The Histories:
Now the Lydians […] were the first of men, so
far as we know, who struck and used coin of gold or silver; and also they were
the first retail-traders. And the Lydians themselves say that the games which
are now in use among them and among the Hellenes were also their invention.
These they say were invented among them at the same time as they colonised
Tyrsenia, and this is the account they give of them: --
In the reign of Atys the son of Manes their
king there came to be a grievous dearth over the whole of Lydia; and the
Lydians for a time continued to endure it, but afterwards, as it did not cease,
they sought for remedies; and one devised one thing and another of them devised
another thing. And then were discovered, they say, the ways of playing with the
dice and the knucklebones and the ball, and all the other games excepting
draughts (for the discovery of this last is not claimed by the Lydians). These
games they invented as a resource against the famine, and thus they used to do --
on one of the days they would play games all the time in order that they might
not feel the want of food, and on the next they ceased from their games and had
food: and thus they went on for eighteen years.†
Many things
mentioned by Herodotus are questionable in their veracity, but this story, to
me, seems plausible; it has the patina of truth to it. That a society would
look to games as a distraction from their woes seems both believable and
healthy. When my wife was in hospital and there was absolutely nothing I could do
to help her, I took some solace in Marcus Aurelius, Søren Kierkegaard, and our weekly
Commands & Colors game. These things helped me make sense of what I was
experiencing, giving my conscious mind a brief remit from my own sense of
ineffectualness, and allowing some clear time for my subconscious to work the intellectual
and emotional baggage that I couldn’t actively think my way through.
I’m not
trying to diminish or cheapen the real pain people face in their lives. And I’m
certainly not trying to say that wargames or games in general are a salve for
that pain. Games are not a replacement for lived experience. But lived experience
can be harrowing. A game can offer a brief respite from the anguish of the
moment. But more than that, it can lend you the space to build or restore a framework through which to approach or
deal with the ongoing horridness. At least, this has been my experience.
After
the game, T spoke of their immediate plans; to get P out of hospital and
comfortably back into their home; welcome their second grandchild – a girl, due (at time of writing) in
just a week or so – into the world; to be participating grandparents in the
child’s life; and, of course, playing the games that are an enduring part of their family traditions. He spoke in terms of short-term goals, and of the tactics to be employed
in making P’s life as full and as fulfilling they can. Listening to him talk
about it, T didn’t sound like a project manager running through procedures and milestones;
he appeared more like a general marshalling all of his forces for battle.
* I
cannot recommend this book, and McGonigal’s more personal follow-up volume. Superbetter: How a Gameful Life Can Make You Stronger, Happier, Braver and More Resilient,
highly enough. McGonigal is an academic, game designer. and brain trauma survivor (her recovery from which she addresses through the course of Superbetter), and a very entertaining and engaging writer. There are also a couple of TED-Talks and other presentations available on the Internet, but your a grown-up; you can find those for yourself.
† This online
text is from G.C. Macauley’s translation, first released in 1890, but still a
worthwhile translation. I have the Barnes & Noble Classics paperback (EAN: 978-1593081027)
which it looks like is still available in print and doesn't cost all that much.
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