Thank God for Spider-Man PS4
Author’s Note: This is the third essay from my collection, Keyboard Therapy. It showcases how video games can create everlasting memories between parents and their children amd how these memories can become the bedrock of a grieving parent’s survival.
Spider-Man stands at the bedside of the woman who raised him. It’s a hospital bed. She’s on oxygen. An IV bag hangs beside her. A slow, rhythmic beat pounds in the background.
She’s dying, infected with a plague released by a crazy supervillain.
Spider-Man clutches the last vial of anti-serum in his hand. He could use it to cure May, but there wouldn’t be enough left to synthesize a cure for the millions of other New Yorkers who have also been infected. If he chooses to make the cure, it’ll take too long to help May.
“I don’t know what to do,” he says as he takes the mask off.
“Yes, you do,” May says with her last words.
I’m sitting in the living room when Austin finishes this emotionally charged scene from the wonderful video game Spider-Man PS4. I’d finished the game a week earlier and knew this was coming. I knew how much it affected me, so I wanted to be around just in case.
“Oh my God,” he says through tears.
“You ok?” I ask as I walk over to the couch and sit beside him.
He’s really crying now. “It just makes me really sad.”
“Why?” I ask.
“Because no matter how hard Spider-Man tried, he couldn’t save Aunt May.”
Sensing an opportunity to teach a life lesson, I replied, “I think that’s the moral of the story. Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, bad things are just gonna happen. What’s important is what you do about it.”
“Pardon the language, but that is a shitty lesson,” he says bluntly.
I laughed and said, “Yeah, but life is like that sometimes. Just remember that no matter what happens, it’ll get better eventually.”
He nodded, slid his headphones back on, and went back to playing the game. I went back to watching YouTube. I had no idea how many times that conversation would haunt my dreams.
A couple of years after that conversation, Austin and I were sitting in the same living room watching YouTube together. An ad came on for the remastered version of Spider-Man PS4, which was going to release on the new PlayStation 5. It would have better graphics, faster load times, and other quality-of-life improvements. Being one of both of our favorite games, we were stoked about replaying it.
“I’m going to get the Platinum Trophy!” Austin said.
That was a big commitment. Every game that released on PlayStation had earnable trophies you could unlock. The games tracked your actions and progress, and the trophies would unlock as you completed the specific challenges tied to them. Some would happen normally as you played the game, like ones tied to the completion of certain story missions. Some required extra effort, like finding all of Spider-Man’s backpacks hidden across the sprawling open world.
The Platinum Trophy unlocked when you had completed all of the other minor trophies. These things give you a certain amount of nerd cred among hardcore video game players. If you had the Platinum trophy for a game, you’d mastered it and seen everything it had to offer. Only the biggest superfans did this.
Obviously, Austin was really passionate about that game, but I already knew that. Long after he’d finished the main story, I’d see him load it up and just web-sling across the world. We’d had many conversations about the game and everything we loved about it. We always came back to how much fun it was to pilot Spider-Man. It was one of the few games that made you feel like you were a different person while you were playing it.
I knew life had been hard for him due to his autism. He knew he was different. He knew that people didn’t understand him. I think he enjoyed pretending to be someone else. It was a feeling I could understand. I was different in my own ways too. I had trouble fitting in. Sometimes being someone else, even if just for a little while, was enough to help me get through the day.
I wanted to help him any way I could, so if he wanted to play Spider-Man on the PS5, I was gonna try to make that happen. But finding a PS5 was practically impossible. Anytime a store received stock, they sold out instantaneously. On eBay, they were going for three to four times the MSRP. I had a good job, but not that good.
I kept trying, but I never could get one before he made his choice.
A few weeks after that horrible day, I was at Walmart. No matter what happens in life, you still have to eat. As I was walking around the store and trying to avoid spots that would remind me of him, I saw one in the case. Something just came over me. I bought it without a second thought. I immediately went home.
I set it on the kitchen table and just stared at it. I couldn’t bring myself to open it. I don’t know what I wanted or expected, but all I got was a thousand tears. I quickly put it away in a closet. It was just too raw.
Months passed, and my grief was suffocating me. Anytime I thought about him, I cried. Anytime someone said his name, I felt the agony of losing him all over again. Everything I’d once loved felt meaningless and hollow. I was struggling to connect with him in any meaningful way. Hell, sometimes I was actively trying not to so I didn’t have to think about it.
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I remember walking down the stairs one morning. I was depressed and crying. I went and sat in his old spot on the couch. I knew I needed to stop running from my feelings, but I was so scared. I was barely holding it together. It was taking every ounce of effort I had to go to work and be productive. I very literally couldn’t afford to have a full-on emotional breakdown.
Then I remembered the PS5 in the closet. I went and got it, hooked it up to my TV, and turned it on. I just sat there for a while staring at the screen. I didn’t know what to play. I got up and looked in Austin’s drawer where he’d kept all of his games. Spider-Man was sitting on top.
I put it in the new PS5 and downloaded the updated version of the game that we had both been so excited to play. It seems silly to say that it took courage to “Press Start,” but I was so scared. I took a deep breath and started playing the game.
It was magical. As I web-slung around New York, I was someone else for a few minutes. I let myself enjoy that feeling. Being Spider-Man was way more fun than being Todd. I was free and weightless as I glided through the city. The air whooshed by, and the music reached an epic crescendo as I dove from the tallest building on the map, pulling up at the last second to send myself flying even higher in the air.
But before I’d even realized it, memories flooded my brain, and I was Todd again.
“Did you find The Bar with No Name?” I’d asked.
“Oh yeah, that was so cool. Did you find Doctor Strange’s house?” he’d reply.
The more I played, the more memories came back.
“What did you think of the Shocker boss fight?” I’d asked him.
“It was ok, not as cool as the Rhino one,” he said.
It was weird. I was thinking of him but not bawling my eyes out.
“Did you unlock the animated Spider-Man suit?” he asked me excitedly.
“Yeah, it looks awesome!” I said.
I put the controller down in the real world. I had a giant smile on my face and an idea in my brain. I was going to get the Platinum trophy for him. He never had the chance, but I knew he really wanted to. I’d do it for him.
It took a few weeks, but I completed almost everything. I’d found all the backpacks, taken all the photos of the secret Marvel Easter eggs, and saved all of Henry’s pigeons. Yeah, you read that correctly. I saved a bunch of pigeons for one of Spider-Man’s friends. Real hero stuff. There was only one trophy left before the Platinum — the one for finishing the main story of the game.
I had been avoiding it. Well, avoiding one particularly emotionally charged scene. I wasn’t sure what I’d feel, but I needed to do it. I’d made a promise to him that I’d get that Platinum trophy, and I wasn’t going to fail him again.
Once again, Spider-Man was standing beside Aunt May. I paused the game and closed my eyes.
When I opened them, I was standing beside Austin. He was lying in a hospital bed. Tubes and wires ran everywhere. One of them breathed for him. Machines hissed and buzzed. The heart monitor beeped slowly.
His body was still alive, but he wasn’t there. He’d had a massive stroke and was brain-dead. I knew what choice we had to make. We had to let him go. He’d attempted to take his own life, but we had to sign the papers to turn the machines off.
I held his hand in mine and ran my other fingers through his hair. I laid my forehead against his and sobbed. This was the last time I’d ever see him.
I opened my eyes, and I was back in my living room. The PS5 controller had fallen on the floor. My own words were echoing through my head.
Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, bad things are just gonna happen.
God, he was right. What a shitty lesson. No matter how hard I tried to be a good father, it wasn’t enough. I’d fought and struggled to protect him from all of the terrible stuff out in the world, but I couldn’t save him from himself.
I’ll just never understand. He could have talked to me or any of the other people in his life who loved him. We could have fixed it. It might not have been perfect, but he’d still be here. We could be playing this game together right now, talking and laughing and web-slinging… together.
But that’s not what is happening. I’m here, alone. I guess there’s nothing left to do but finish the game and fulfill my promise.
The Platinum trophy popped on the screen as the credits rolled. I sat back in my recliner and smiled. For all the pain and tears that came along with it, I’d also managed to feel closer to him than I had since his death. It didn’t magically fix me, but it helped. It was a web-sling in the right direction.
It’s been years since I unlocked that trophy. I still replay Spider-Man PS4 every year on his birthday. I start a fresh save and do everything all over again. Sometimes, it feels like he’s sitting here beside me as I do. I laugh. I cry. I smile. I revel in my memories of him.
“It’s Spider-Hyphen-Man,” he’d say as he cackled. I can hear it plain as day — the emphasis he’d put on the word “hyphen,” the unbridled joy in the laughter.
Thank God for Spider-Man PS4.
