Last night I came to an awful and heart-wrenching realization. Some one very dear to me had died.
His name was Lance.
He was a young adult.
And he was my son.
The second of 5 children, Lance was a troubled child, and I believe it is this that caused him to walk down the dark and treacherous path that he did. He never really fit into the family. Gifted with the Genius trait, yet forever condemned to a life of hardship and exclusion by the evil trait, Lance was never able to reach his full potential due his conflicting nature. A part of him yearned for acceptance from his family and peers, yet another part of him compulsively and repeatedly sabotaged the very relationships he so desperately desired.
I think the biggest factor that influenced this behaviour was the strained relationship he had with his father. From the time Lance was born, it was clear that his father preferred his eldest son Marque to Lance. He rarely interacted with his second son unless it was to scold or taunt the child for failure or bad behaviour. This bred a great deal of resentment between the two of them. Whenever Lance reached out for affection or attention from his father, he was rejected, and often mocked.
By the time Lance had grown into a teenager, he had given up, and the two of them avoided each other whenever possible. The fact that lance lacked the closeness and sense of family at home was only exacerbated by the awkwardness he experienced with his siblings. His older brother Marque was the pride and joy of the family, the popular, good-looking and highly educated prodigal son. Lance was forever in his brothers' shadow, always striving to make a name for himself but forever failing.
Interactions between lance and the other children were kept to a minimum; Lance chose instead to indulge his genius skills in pursuits of the mind by writing science fiction novels, discussing conspiracy theories with any adult who would listen, and frequently and obsessively checking taps, stoves, and brushing his teeth, often twice or three times consecutively in an effort to ease the anxiety instilled in his mind by his emotionally abusive father.
Some time after lance grew into a teen, our house was unfortunately broken into. Everyone was devastated. Everyone except however, Lance. Since lance could lay his name to very few personal possessions, thankfully none of which were taken, he remained unaffected by the event. His siblings' lack of compassion for his troubled childhood compelled him to respond to their distress in much the same way; ignorance and apathy. It was at this point in time I could see lance changing into the man I hoped he would never become.
After the break-in, lance became uncommonly and unnervingly curious about the dynamics of such an act, often identifying with the very criminal who so brutally invaded our home. His love of the computer was twisted and perverted into a love of hacking, whereby he would use his genius mind to steal money from the bank accounts of innocent Sunset Valley citizens. And it just went downhill for him from there.
For the first time in his life, lance felt like he had actually achieved something.
He felt vindicated for all the hurt that had been inflicted on him.
He felt proud. He felt... important.
Like he actually mattered.
And for the first time in his life, he was in control.
By this time it was too late. There was nothing I could do to save him from the path he was walking down. I could see his fascination with criminal activities growing inevitably into an obsession.
As a police officer, this was very difficult for me to acknowledge.
I can recall in vivid detail the very moment his father realized what he had become. His father and I were sitting in our living room one night in the early hours of the morning. His father hadn't even noticed that lance was not asleep in his bed upstairs. In fact, I don't really think he would have cared where lance was, as long as he wasn't in the same room.
I remember hearing the soft purr of a car engine as someone stopped out the front of our house. Light crept in through the lacy curtains on the windows. Recalling our previous experience with uninvited late-night callers, all we could do was sit quietly where we were, too stunned to move or to speak.
The door opened...
And in walked lance.
He was wearing a balaclava and a black jump suit and carrying a heavily laden backpack. It was painfully obvious where he had been and what he had been doing all night. Recovering from shock, his father rose to his feet, raised his hand and pointed a trembling finger towards Lance. He then muttered the words that will be forever imprinted in our memories; "You're no son of mine"
It was then that the two of them ruthlessly declared each other nemeses.
I was the only person who really got along with lance. I was his mother. I gave birth to him. I nursed him and I certainly wasn't going to give up on him like his father had. I believe this is the reason lance chose not to move out of home when he became a young adult.
As his mother I chose to ignore his criminal behaviours for the most part. He had become quite adept at covering his tracks and eliminating incriminating evidence. Even if I had been to report him, I would have had little substance to lend weight to such accusations.
The relationship between Lance and his father predictably remained hostile, and it didn't help at all that Lance had become quite mean spirited. No longer did he quietly suffer his fathers' taunts and abuse; he now retaliated frequently and often violently, and on more than one occasion provoked physical attacks from his father. He began to enjoy their brief but dramatic confrontations to the point where he would deliberately initiate them, sneaking around the house in order to scare his father and breaking household items.
Lance was well into young adulthood by the time he encountered his first romantic relationship. Her name was Claire, and apparently they were accomplices. He invited her back to the house a few times, and then suddenly they stopped seeing each other. I later found out that Claire had become pregnant, and lance didn't want the responsibility of being a father.
Soon after, he started seeing another girl. And soon after that they broke up. Lance led a long line of troubled relationships. I believe that he was so desperate to feel closeness with another person that he always lacked at home, that his father and his siblings failed to provide, that he would irresponsibly rush into relationships in an effort to fill the emotional void in his heart. He failed at this however, as many of his girlfriends craved security and stability, something that lance could not provide, and thus he was doomed to live a life of unhappiness and unfulfilment. At least I thought that was the case.
Then he met Lisa.
Right from the onset, we all thought it would simply fizzle out after a few months in much the same way his previous relationships had. Lisa was inappropriate; always saying the wrong things, always dressing the wrong way. She was quite the snob, often turning up her nose at our offerings of autumn salad and criticising our taste in artwork. But as usual, lance was convinced he had found his soulmate, his perfect partner, the woman who would compliment him and stand by him for the rest of time. And there was no telling him otherwise. Perhaps what attracted him to her was the fact that he saw her as an outward manifestation of the chaos that existed inside himself, and thus he felt as though he had finally found someone who would truly understand him.
After a few months it became evident that our assumptions about Lisa were wrong. She was getting serious about the relationship, and Lance seemed to encourage this. It wasn't long before Lance proposed a gesture that shocked us all.
Shortly after the marriage the two of them welcomed their daughter into the world. She was beautiful. And lance could not have been prouder.
His feelings of elation didn't last very long though. Soon he began to feel more and more of Lisas' attention shifting away from him and towards their only child. As a mother, this was natural behaviour on Lisas' part. But lance was blinded by his painful past. All he could see was a repetition of the abandonment of his childhood. He began to resent his wife and daughter. And once again, he sought to deal with this pain by seeking closeness from outside.
The betrayal was unforgivable. Lisa packed up her belongings along with their child and left. Deep down lance wanted her to stay, but he was never very articulate with his feelings. He could do nothing but watch her leave.
It became apparent that he was still in love with her when after 6 months he had remained celibate. He eventually worked up the courage to ask her for a second chance and she accepted. They reconciled and began making plans to find their own place and for lance to find a more wholesome, but more importantly more legal occupation.
And for the first time, I truly believed things would work out for him.
But it wasn't to be.
It was a warm autumn day. The wind was rustling whimsically through the leaves. They were on their way to visit a prospective home when an out of control semi trailer collided with their recently paid off station wagon. Their lives had been tragically cut short.
I never expected Lances' father to attend the funeral. After the eulogy, I was surprised and yet comforted to see him approach the casket. For so long the two of them had been at loggerheads, but it had taken the finality of death for his father to finally see the truth. Lance was his son. They were family. And nothing could change that. He reached down and touched down and touched lances hand with his before uttering the words I never expected to hear.
"I'm sorry, Son"
I only wish he were alive to hear it.
His name was Lance.
He was a young adult.
And he was my son.
(A tribute to a beloved Sim, By Catler)
Authors Note:
I wrote this tribute about a year ago after one of my favourite Sims died unexpectedly. I was devastated, which the people around me found hard to understand considering it was over a game. I didn't play for months afterwards. It felt like every time I did, I was just trying to resurrect some connection I had with this Sim, and was unable to come up with any original content that didn't resemble, or remind me, of him. Slowly I got back into the game but there was always a feeling of emptiness in the back of my mind that I couldn't shake. A year later, I've finally realized why it hit me so hard. My Sim died with story progression on while I was playing another family (his brother and brothers girlfriend). By the time I switched back to my beloved Sim, he was nowhere to be found, and I was never able to find his tombstone or even find out through his families memories exactly how he died. Without any form of closure, I was unable to move on for a very long time.
A year later, the topic came up in conversation with my mother in law. I hadn't thought about it in a while, but as soon as i started describing the sim and his life, i found myself holding back real tears. Even though I knew how ridiculous it was to be this emotional over a game, I couldn't help the old feelings coming back up. After discussing my emotional reaction, I came to the realization that the whole thing had been so upsetting because on some level I was holding myself responsible for his death. If I had been there, if I had backed up my save games, I could have saved him. But I wasn't there. And now hes gone.
Although Lance was only a Simulation, he was real to me.
To all who have lost beloved sims, I offer my consolations, and hope that in time, you'll be able to let go and look back fondly on the time you had with your sims without regrets.
The accident and funeral depicted in the last few paragraphs didn't actually happen in game, but were written afterwards in an attempt to find (or create) closure.