Saving Grace

[MUSIC] >> From Gimlet Media, this is The Not. A podcast about black culture from Blackness's biggest fan. I'm Brittany Loops. >> And I'm Eric Hennings. [MUSIC] >> Hey Brittany, guess what? >> I think I know. >> You should know. >> I think I know. >> We have someone else in the studio. >> There is somebody else in the studio. >> I guess who it is. >> I can see who it is. [LAUGHTER] >> So maybe what I should do is just say, "Welcome to the studio. It's a Wallace Mac producer." >> Mr. Wallace Mac. >> Yes. >> Thank you all. >> Welcome back Mac. >> So I think you got something for us, right? >> Yes, I do. I do. So I want to tell you all about something. I met this woman named Autumn. Autumn's 26. She lives in LA and she works as an aid in a special education classroom. We got into this conversation, talking to my family, stuff like that. She told me this story about her grandma. And what this story did was it just kind of made me rethink. I don't know. Everything that I thought I knew about life and death and how we choose to remember people when they're gone. >> Wow. >> You know, serious. So here's how Autumn remembers her grandma. >> She was a chunky, let's say, five foot, six, five foot, six and a half woman. Lighter skin, she always kept her hair pressed. Every single day, she'd put the press and comb on the stove and press her hair. Even though that's not good for your hair, you don't press dirty hair. She had an air about her of having class. She always wore pearl earrings. She had big old glasses. And she had an amazing smile. Like she had an episode, I guess. And then one side of her face, her mouth drooped and she was really self-conscious about it. But she would still smile. And it was just the most beautiful smile in the world. >> Wow. >> She loved her grandma. >> Yeah. >> You could tell they were close. >> They were. >> They were. So Autumn's grandma, Grace, she died 11 years ago when Autumn was 15. And Autumn said when she died, it was definitely hard, but at least it was peaceful. Here's how she remembers it. >> There was no suffering, no pain. It could be there for her. And what gave her hugs and kisses, everything, she wasn't by herself. Or she wasn't with some nurse that didn't really get attached to her or anything. She was with family. >> That's beautiful. I mean, it's heartbreaking, but. >> Okay, but here's what things take a turn. The whole thing about her grandma dying is surrounded by family and the hugs and kisses. >> Uh-huh. >> That actually didn't happen. >> Wait, huh? >> What? >> What do you mean? >> The way she sounded. >> Just heard her say it. >> Yeah. >> Okay, so I'm going to explain it. The memory Autumn just described the one that you just heard. That's the memory she built. She actually recreated her grandma in a video game called The Sims. >> Wait. >> Like The Sims. >> Like The Video Game. >> Like you play in the computer. >> Yes. >> Like The Sims, where you create your own fantasy world, you get to create characters. >> Right. >> You build the world around them. You know, you get to determine how they look, what they wear, and what kind of careers they have, and how to interact with other people. That Sims. >> I didn't know this game worked like this. >> Well, you never played Sims. >> Yeah. >> But I haven't. I just got into clothes. >> Yeah. >> The Sims is a fantasy world. So it was crazy to me that the fantasy she choose to create would be something so painful, you know? That's not how most people would play. I mean, not me at least. But Autumn has always kind of like approach playing the game a little differently. Starting from the very first time she saw it. Autumn was nine years old, and a friend introduced her to the game. [ Music ] >> So we went to her room, and she had the Sims on her computer. And I watched her build a house and make these people, and the people were talking and cooking, and I was like, "Whoa, it's like a dollhouse on a computer." She was kind of cruel, I guess, with them, like, journeying them on purpose. But I liked the thought of being able to make all these little tiny people, and they all live their own individual tiny lives. >> So once Autumn got the game, she decided to play it differently. >> I liked the thought of being able to, like, have, let them have the most rewarding lives that they possibly could. "Oh, this person can be a singer." "Okay, well, I want her to be the best singer, so she's gonna go to work, and she's gonna do her best, and she's gonna find friends." Like, I wanted them to have rich fulfilling lives. Why did you want your Sims to succeed? >> Because I like when people are happy. Like, it's hard to explain, but, like, I don't like, I'm really sensitive, I guess. I don't like seeing people suffer whether they're real or not. [MUSIC] >> For Autumn, playing The Sims was an escape from real life. As a kid, she was bullied pretty relentlessly at school, and things weren't much better at home. >> My mom worked as a teacher, so she worked with kids all day, and then she came home, and I guess coming home to a kid was a lot too. So if she wasn't, I guess, disciplining, then she was off by herself, and there was no other parent in the equation. Growing up, I was really bitter and resentful, deeply, deeply bitter and resentful, that everyone else seemed to have at least one parent that loved them, and I didn't. >> The one person who really cared about her was her grandma. >> I would get out of school early, and she would pick me up. I lived right around the corner. It was a block away from the school, but she refused to let me walk. So she would take me to Chuck E. Cheese every week, one day every week after school, and she would give me just coins. And I would do like, dance as revolution while she sat at a booth, and just read a home in Gardens magazine. >> Her grandmother would take her to museums, spend days with her at the library, cook for her, and when she was bullied or having problems with her mom, her grandma was the only person she felt comfortable talking to. >> She was my mom. I mean, I have a mom, obviously, but she was my mom. If I needed advice, she was one that gave it to me. If I was sad, she was one that comforted me. Like, she was, I can't explain how much of everything that she was to me. At the end of the day, my grandmother was all I had, because my mom didn't want anything to do with me. >> Why do you think she cares so much? >> I have no idea. Like, my brain want to say because she was my grandmother, but it's like, people aren't nice just because someone's family. I guess she just wanted to let me have a really enriching and fulfilled life. Maybe which is really good of her, but that's all I can think of. >> Autumn's grandma was just being kind to her, nurturing and taking care of a tiny person who needed to be shown some love. Autumn was her tiny person. So when Autumn started playing The Sims, she mimicked her grandmother. How her grandmother treated her is how Autumn treated her tiny people, her Sims. >> Logically, I knew it was a game, but at the same time, I was so invested in these people. And in what they did, it was like, I can do this. I can make them be happy. I can do something. I can change things. And it gave me a sense of power that I guess I didn't have otherwise. And pretty soon, that's how Autumn was spending all of her time, playing The Sims and hanging out with her grandma. But that changed when Autumn turned 15. See, that's the year her grandma died. >> I found out that my mom telling me, I just remember her segment, "Graddy had passed." I mean, she was at hospice for a while in her house in home hospice care. Because she had lung cancer, and so she was deteriorating. And we went to see her one more time, and then we left. And I remember a couple of days after I told my mom, I really felt like I needed to see her. And my mom said, no, we already said goodbye. We're not going back. So when she finally actually passed, and she told me it was just kind of really casual almost, it was just, okay, give her a kiss before you leave the house. And then she was passed away, and the next time I saw her body was at the viewing. And I didn't really go to look at it because of my mind. It wasn't her. It was like, oh, she looks so smooth. That's not what she looked like in real life. And I didn't want to see someone who wasn't, who I remember. >> Autumn just couldn't accept that her grandma was gone. >> For me, it was like, okay, well, let me have her back. I want her back, let me make her be back. >> But that's not how it works. Dying is part of being human. And grieving is just the process that humans go through to help us accept. Someone we love is gone. It's just what humans do. But Autumn had already been playing God for years in the Sims. So she wasn't about to play by those rules. She decided to recreate her grandma in the game. [MUSIC] Autumn was determined to make the Sims look and act as close to her grandma as she could. But there was something that made that kind of hard. The Sims turns out to be like most things in life. The default settings in the Sims were white as hell. Autumn tried a few times, but it just wasn't coming out right. And then she found a website called The Black Simmer. The Black Simmer is a forum in Facebook group for Black people who play and love the Sims. It's the place you go to get custom content made specifically with Black players in mind. If you want your Sim to have things like a go grill or lemonade braids or even specific types of food like ox tailing amms, the Black Simmer is where you go to get it. The tin that's supposed to have butter cookies and it has sewing things instead. Or the big, I think it's country crock butter thing that has no butter. It has like leftovers from something else. Like little touches like that or like a clock. A clock that is apparently not sold anymore, but every single black household has had it before. Or like this pan, like little things that are so culturally pregnant. These things I could take and put in my grandmother's house and put it in her life and put on her and make her feel more solidified. So it's not just this casual memory of maybe my grandmother's house and maybe my grandmother. It's my grandmother. It's my grandmother's house. It's her memory that I can keep. Now that Autumn had found the Black Simmer, she was ready to recreate her grandma the way she remembered her. So she sat down at the desktop computer in her room and got to work. The first step was making sure that I got her face looking as close as possible. Like got rid of the hair made her bald. So I could see what I was doing. It took a gross amount of time like shaping her eyes, her nose, her fate. Like the best that I could remember. Autumn's clicking around on different eyes and different noses and skin tones that she found on the Black Simmer. That skin color is my grandmother's skin color. Those glasses are my grandmother's glasses that hair. Next stop, she had to get granny some clothes. I gave her a maybe and white polka dot shirt because I remember her wearing that a lot, a lot. A hat that she would normally wear called a tan looks kind of like a brain. Grandmother wore jeans. I made sure to give her her pearl earrings. But it wasn't just her looks that mattered. The thing that made Autumn's grandma special to her was her heart. So she starts selecting the personality traits that her grandma will have. Autumn starts to scroll the list of available traits and each trait prompts Autumn's Sim to demonstrate a different movement. Autumn's grandma loved to garden. So when she clicks, loves the outdoors. Her grandma throws her hands up an excitement at the idea of going outside. When she clicks family oriented, her grandma begins to kiss a framed family photo. When she clicks hot headed, her grandma blows steam from her ears. And after hours and hours of work, everything is perfect. Autumn realizes that she's legit looking at her grandma again. She'd done the impossible. She brought her grandma back. Autumn had already designed herself as a character in the game. And now that she had her grandma back, she was ready to pick up their relationship where it left off. She called a lot. She would ask to like go somewhere. She would say, "Do you want to hang out? Do you want to chat?" I would always say yes. Every opportunity that she asked to hang out in the game, I would hang out with her. And it wasn't just hanging out or reliving memories from the past. And away, her grandma got to be a part of her future. She got to watch Autumn grow into an adult. See her graduate from college, start a career. She got to see Autumn build a family. She got to have great grandchildren. My sim had a toddler and my grandmother was teaching my toddler how to walk. And so in the game, you can record, they have home videos basically. You can record things that happen in the game and then still play them while you're in game on a TV, like a regular home video. And so I recorded my grandmother teaching my toddler to walk. And for me, that was, it was wild. Because it's something that I know that I'll never have. But it was so wild to see it happening. Like I wish, you know, I wish that she could be around to see things like that or to be around to see the birth of my first child, things like that. But I can't have that. So it was just, it was really good to be able to have it happen in a game, if anything. Autumn had her grandma back in her life. And not only that, she'd never have to tell this grandma, goodbye. It was everything that Autumn asked for. But coming up after the break, Autumn realizes that maybe what she asked for isn't exactly what she needs. When we last left Autumn, she was 15 years old and she had just created a digital version of her deceased grandma in The Sims, a video game that kind of works like a life simulation. She had been logging on to visit her grandma in The Sims for months. And their relationship felt real, except in this one way. Time wasn't moving. See, in the game, you can prevent your Sims from aging or getting old. This feature is called turning aging off. So Autumn's grandma wasn't getting any older and that meant that she could never die in the game. But one day, Autumn realized The Sims, a place she'd always turned for comfort, wasn't actually comforting her. I think I got to a point where like I had a really, really, really big cry the night before and I had school the next day so that wasn't great. But I mean, I had a really solid crying grieving period because while my mom wasn't showing anything, it felt like I couldn't show anything. So it's like I couldn't be outwardly sad about anything or I couldn't grasp that my grandmother was gone. Like for me, I couldn't have that kind of closure, I guess, that emotional closure. But I remember one night I had a really solid cry about it and then that's when it kind of like stinking that she was gone and that no amount of gameplay or anything like that would actually bring a her back. I could have a sim, you know, I could have this representation of her in my game, but I couldn't have her back. A digital immortal grandma wasn't enough. It would never be enough. A sim would never be able to comfort her with a touch to listen to her problems and give her advice to take her to Chuckie Cheese or the museum. Autumn realized that what the sims could actually give her wasn't what she set out for. She thought she wanted her grandma back, but what she really wanted was a redo, a chance to say goodbye to her grandma on her terms. So Autumn had to make a choice. She could play with her grandma in the Sims forever or she could turn aging on and face death again. I turned the aging back on and it was absolutely miserable. I felt awful because at 6 o'clock every day of the game, the little age meter would move up a little bit and it's like, well, we're that much closer to the end that upset me because in my mind it's like I don't want to lose her again. As Autumn is watching and waiting, the clock is ticking. Time in the Sims moves a lot more quickly than time in our world. A day on Earth could be a few weeks in the Sims and quickly, years started to fly by in the game. Her grandma's garden bloomed and withered. Holidays and birthdays went by. And finally, the day came where her time ran out. I couldn't see her life thing because I was playing as me. But I could see my moving and it's like, okay, well, if my life is progressing, I know hers is too. That eventually I got a notification in the top corner of my screen that said that her name Grace was going to pass soon and if I had any business left to take care of it now, I was terrified because it's like, I can't, it was that initial shock of, I can't lose her again. I don't want to lose her. I want to turn off aging. I'm not ready. I can't do this. I want to keep her. I don't want to lose her again. But I had to pause the game, kind of walk away and think it's like, well, this is life. This is what happens. And at least it's peaceful and you're getting a warning. So go ahead and keep playing and just let what's going to happen happen. So Autumn Day with her grandma would have done for her. She built her the best life possible, even in her last days. And pause the game and I moved her sim out of her house into my house. It's like a keep an eye on her. She got to be really comfortable in her last in game days. I remember that she liked to sit outside in her garden on this like swinging bench that she had. So I let her sit on that and let her do some gardening. I let her talk to her friends. I let her talk with my sim and my kids. Maybe sat me talked and then I saw that it was the very end of her life. I think it was at the very end. There was no time left. It was going to be that day. So I didn't let my sim go to work. I didn't let the kids go to school. No one went anywhere. I would stayed home with her at the right on time. She just kind of like the care were like shot to hers. You have to see it. Did she just laid out? Like all deaths in the Sims, the Grim Reaper appears, accompanied by Hula dancers. A strange mix of death and happiness. Like there's this big fancy Luah looking thing like the Grim Reaper Cubs. They just like nod and accept it that it's their time. And they go. And they left behind it, erred. And all of my sims start crying. They're all bawling. I'm crying. Like I couldn't stop crying. And that's how her grandma died the second time. I guess I'm just curious. The grieving process is still really hard for you, but do you say it still felt better in the game? It felt better for me. Yeah. Because I know that in the game, like there's a grave I can visit. I know where it is at all times. It's on my house's property. If someone misses her or wants to go grieve, they can go do that and it's okay. Do you think you could have processed this grief that you had associated like with the passing of your grandma in the same way without the sims? Heavens no. Not a chance. I would still be sitting and thinking to myself, my grandmother is sitting in the living room in her house. I know that's not true, but that's what I grasped to, to like keep myself from melting, to like breaking down was no. She's not actually gone. She's just sitting on the couch in her house and she's just having a time and she doesn't have phone connection and that's why she hasn't called. That's all it is. Autumn's an adult now. She is determined to keep her grandma's memory alive. She still visits her grandma's grave site. She decaries it with flowers. She brings family to visit. She's not visiting the actual grave site. She's visiting the one in the game. Ten years after her grandma passed, Autumn still hasn't gone to visit her real life resting place. Autumn told me that the reason why is because the grave is too far away, that it would take more than half a day for her to get there. Which is fair, but when you think about it, what's half a day to see someone that you cared this much about? So I mentioned my skepticism to Autumn and she admitted that the biggest reason she hasn't visited her grandmother's grave site is fear. Fear that her grandmother's grave will be an unkempt mess and fear that once she lays eyes on it, all of those feelings of grief from 11 years ago will come rushing back up to the surface. There's a saying that grieving never ends, it changes. And it's possible that for Autumn, that's true. She's still not over her grandmother's death and she may never be. But because of the Sims and the family that the Sims provided her, she was at least able to find some peace. And sure, maybe it all played out on a computer screen. But who am I to say that that peace isn't real? The nod is produced by me, Wallace Mack, with Brittany Loose, Eric Addings, and Kate Parkinson Morgan. Our senior producer is Sada Abduraman, who are edited by a Manuel Berry and Jorge Just. Fact checking by Max Gibson. The show is mixed by Cedric Wilson. [Music] [Music]