It happened on December 10, 1999. I remember the date because it was two days after the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, and I was playing Resident Evil 3: Nemesis on my PlayStation when the day went downhill.

My cousin had been missing for three days, and since there was nothing I myself could do, I just did what I normally did right after a school day. I played my heart out.

I remember how I had equipped Jill with a grenade launcher that fired acid rounds, and was actually headed to the helicopter to make my escape from Raccoon City when the phone call happened. My aunt found my cousin at the morgue.

According to coroners, he had died of blunt force trauma to the head. AS information trickled in, the essential gist of it was that his drug-addled friend kidnapped him and hit him with a blunt object when my cousin tried to escape. As far as we know, it may have been because my cousin's friend didn't want to pay a debt he owed, but then we don't really know what happened that day.

What we did know, when that phone call came in, was that they found his body dumped on the roadside in a dark sidestreet on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, two days prior to the call.

When my grandmother got the phone call and relayed the information to me, I reacted in the only way I knew how.

I went back to the PlayStation and got on the helicopter that would take me away from Raccoon City.

Up until now, I've never been able to properly handle the death of a loved one, but I find that December 10, 1999 was especially... poignant, because of the reaction it elicited in me. I didn't know how to react to that sort of thing, but I did know that I was angry that it happened. I wanted my own grenade launcher with acid rounds, I wanted a shotgun, I wanted to do something, but against death, there isn't much of anything you can really do but learn to accept it and deal with it in your own way.

Right now, as I write this, I realize that this is the first time I've ever discussed this event with any sense of clarity. I always expected to forget the date, or to forget what I was doing at the time, but as a gamer, I can't seem to do that.

Gaming kept me from becoming depressed about the whole situation, and whether that's good or not, I can't really say. I do know, however, that Resident Evil 3: Nemesis will always be a game that I will remember, and for all the saddest reasons in the world.

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Cross-posted to my personal blog