What do you do when you’re faced with a major loss? Some people go for the extreme “solution” and commit suicide. Others attempt to drown out their sorrows with alcohol. Me, I fixate on video games.

This was especially true during the first half of 2007. During that year, two people were diagnosed with cancer.  One was the father of a friend of mine. The other one was my mother.

To make a long story short, my friend’s father pulled through. My mother didn’t.

I’d already played a bit of Trauma Center: Second Opinion before she died. After her passing, I went all out. I rented the Nintendo Wii at my friend’s Internet Cafe.  I played almost non-stop everyday from the time it opened till the time it closed its doors before dawn. At the time, it seemed to be one of my main forms of coping with the stages of Kubler-Ross’ model.

For those of you who may not be familiar with Dr. Kubler-Ross model, allow me to explain. There are supposedly five stages that people go through when they’re faced with traumatic loss: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. It’s a highly contested model, as the stages aren’t exactly set in stone.

For some reason, I skipped the denial and bargaining stages entirely and went straight to anger and depression, flitting back and forth between the two as I played Trauma Center with a vengeance.

Was it escapism? Definitely. I needed to forget my problems, if only for a little while. Dr. Derek Stiles, the main character of the game, possessed superhuman healing powers that helped me do just that.

Whenever I extracted a tumor from my virtual patient in the game, I imagined I was extracting the tumors from my mother’s body. Whenever I had Dr. Stiles activate his Healing Touch, I played make-believe and envisioned him operating on my mother and saving her life.

Of course, I only had so much time to do that. When the shop eventually closed, I was right back where I started: grieving, hurting, and absolutely clueless as to what to do next.

I’ve often likened my gaming habits at the time to going deep-sea diving. Sometimes, divers may be tempted not to return to the surface because it’s so beautiful down in the ocean depths. They can stay in their fantasy world and forget about all their problems…until they run out of oxygen.

At some point, I moved on. I don’t remember exactly what triggered it–I just decided to do it, and I did it.

Perhaps I’d gotten tired of grieving. Perhaps I’d told myself that getting on with my life was what my mother would’ve wanted. Perhaps I realized that failing to move on would have been a grave dishonor to her memory. Perhaps it’s because I’d finished Trauma Center’s story mode.

In any case, I picked up Trauma Center: New Blood months later. There was one big difference this time: I didn’t play it to forget; I played it to have fun.

It’s been two years since Mom passed away. I’d like to think that she’s looking down at me from Heaven and smiling. Perhaps I’ll invest in a Nintendo DS and try out Trauma Center 2 as well.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom. I’ll see you, Grandma Mai, Grandma Zeny and Grandpa Pai again someday.