In Her Absence

In an instant, everything changed.

She pleaded to stay, to no avail.

And just like that, she was gone. Yves was alone with the two boys and nothing but his memories of how lovely she had been.

His last sculpture, a wine rack, a gift for her, sat unfinished in his studio.

Jean's grief made visible.

Jean, the eldest son, took it especially hard. He painted this, a tombstone with a single flower, the day after she died. Instead of selling it to supplement their very short income, Yves kept it and hung it in the bedroom he once shared with Cora. It was a painful reminder, and more than once I saw him standing weakly before it, crying softly.

Jean even dreamed of the fire.

Yves, mourning in the midst of her garden.

The empty chair where she used to sit.

The finished wine rack.

 Eventually, he finished the rack. What had been intended as a gift for her was now sold. The struggling family needed money more than sentimentality. That being said, there was actually very little time for him to work, for the house still needed managing, and there was Rickard the toddler, who thankfully was too young to understand what had happened, or why his father and older brother were miserable.

Her beloved garden fell into ruin

 Despite his best efforts, Yves didn't have the skill with the earth his wife had, and her garden withered and died. Ironically, Life Plants, laden with fruit, sat unharvested, a painful reminder of what had been snatched from the home. Not that they could've saved her. I like to imagine, though, that they could.

His mother?

Much like his father, Jean threw himself into his work, painting almost tirelessly in between school and homework. His skill advanced quickly, and soon he became the primary source of (albeit meager) income for the family, as Yves was still too grief-stricken to do much more other than care for Rickard and perform the most basic of survival functions.

So, Jean painted.

And painted. I'd like to think the greenery was homage to Cora.

And painted. He was getting better.

Much better.

Incredibly better. Yves kept this one instead of selling it.

Yves noticing his son's talent. Not sure if that's admiration or jealousy on his face.

Rickard's birthday celebration

Letting the professionals handle it.

 

Rickard aged up, a quiet affair, a chair for Cora conspicuously empty. It was one of the most mirthless birthdays I'd ever witnessed.

The dishwasher broke again, but this time I stepped in and called a repairman. I was not leaving these two boys complete orphans.

Was this his representation of his wife?

 

Life went on, and fall moved into winter. Yves gradually found time for sculpting, but his grief still consumed him. He began sculpting the same statue, over and over again, no matter what material. I watched, partly in horror, partly in sadness, but mostly in morbid curiosity. When I play Sims I make a few decisions for them, but for the most part I leave them to their own devices to see what they'll do.  I didn't let him keep any of these statues, though. I was not about to let his grief cripple his ability to provide for his family.

The house, quiet, lonely, buried in snow.

Jean's work continued to mature as he aged.

 Because Yves was a workaholic, his lack of progress and income began to seriously gnaw at him. He had just aged from young adult to full adult, and with that came the Mid-life Crisis that plagues some sims, particularly those who aren't feeling particularly fulfilled.

His older son Jean had just aged into a teen, and although Jean was doing most of the heavy lifting in regards to keeping the family afloat financially, Yves had a crazy idea, and per my policy of letting them do their thing, I let him do his thing. Was this his attempt at regaining some semblance of control over his life? Was he trying to free himself of other responsibilities so he could focus on his work? Was he trying to give the boys a better environment so he could heal himself for a while? I don't know. I just watched while he did it, and I might've been a little sad. I don't know what his reasons were, I just know this was a very sad, lonely little family.

Placing the call in the bathroom like a coward.

He sent them to boarding school.  I don't know if he didn't want the boys to hear what he was planning, or if maybe he just didn't want to see their faces, but he placed the calls in the bathroom. I watched, wanting to stop but knowing this was their story.

The taxis arrived one cold winter's morning, early. The boys didn't even have time to finish their breakfast before they were whisked away to separate schools. He wasn't even allowing them to go to the same one, to have each other. I began to wonder if he was some kind of villain, if he was not the romantic artist I'd first taken him for. Or had the loss of Cora simply ruined his vision of the world?

Jean's room, now empty.

Yves, dining alone at that sad little table.

 He threw himself into his work, now without any 'distractions' or responsibilities. I had never seen a sim work so hard without complaining. He made, over the next two weeks, probably twelve or thirteen different sculptures. He sold them all, the household finances were finally in order. He furnished the upstairs, finally, filling out all the blank spaces he and Cora had intended to fill together. The boys occasionally called or sent letters; he never called back.

And quietly, just as the money improved, so did his 'lifetime happiness.' Normally I use the points to purchase something that will benefit their careers or make life easier, but this time, he had way more points than they usually did. I didn't even know what to do with them, so I picked a reward I'd never used before: the Dusty Old Lamp.

I don't know which expansion it's attached to, I guess you could google it if you're curious. All I know is it appeared in his inventory, and I set it on a side table for several days before I had the courage to get him to inspect the thing.

He did, a genie appeared, and I don't even recall what was on the rest of the list, because all I saw was one thing - one thing that would surely put everything back the way it needed to be. The one thing that would heal this poor broken family.

And so it was, in the middle of winter, Yves' cold, broken heart, finally healed.

And just like that, she was back.

With Autumn Comes the Long Night

 

    In the early days of their marriage, life for the Lassiters was good. Cora's garden was flourishing, and she had even won an award from the city for her contributions to the local food scene. Yves was an aspiring sculptor, so he spent most of his days in his studio in the basement, working away with clay or wood. Cora quickly learned which crops sold for more and started focusing on those, while Yves toiled almost endlessly to improve his skill, coming up from the basement only for what amounted to the basics of survival. They barely saw each other, even though they both worked from home and were on the same lot 24/7. 

    

First moments of labor

    Even with all that work, there was time enough for other activities, and it wasn't long before they found themselves expecting their first child. The birth kinda snuck up on us all, and once again they were pitifully broke, living bill to bill, harvest to harvest and sculpture to sculpture. 

Even in sleep, Cora dreams of work.

 They were both exceptional parents from the beginning, taking turns to watch over their son, Jean, who for a sim baby seemed remarkably fussy.  He demanded a lot of their time, and Cora began to see her garden fall into decline as she had less time to care for it.

   Cora and Yves were two ships passing in the night, and barely spoke or acknowledged each other. Even with Yves having 'workaholic' as one of his traits, he began wanting to spend time with Cora more than he wanted to sculpt or sell his work, and that was how I knew they were really falling deep into their own isolation.
  

    
     Autumn was marching stolidly onward, though, and many nights covered the garden in a layer of frost so thick that it took a few warm days to remove. So, when she could not garden, she spent extra time with Jean, doting on him. As they saved up some money, she also purchased some planter pots and moved some of her more valuable plants inside, to continue the growing season even through the increasingly colder days and nights.

Cora and Jean among the plants of her tiny conservatory.

    Even as her food harvests diminished and their profits (or in many cases, barely breaking even) fell with it, so too did their budget, and more and more of her harvests began to find a home in their own larder instead of being sold at the local market. Their home, though poor, was a beacon of warmth and love, a pool of golden light sheltered from the increasing frost and meager meals.

A quiet book on a frosty day.

 
      Jean was never hungry, though many nights his parents might have had less than they wanted or eaten leftovers for the umpteenth time in a row, keeping careful track of which were oldest so that nothing was spoiled or wasted. Jean knew nothing but love and attention, and Cora doted on him.

Yves worked

And worked.

And he worked. Exhaustion was a regular thing for him.

The new second story, with Cora enjoying a rare warm day.

        More and more, Yves worked while Cora raised Jean. While there was plenty of love, the labor was not quite shared. His sculptures were regularly bringing in about 1300 simoleons each. With the extra money, they scrimped here and there where they could, and with a little work they added a second story to the house, literally a wall or a room at a time as they could afford it. Even when 'finished' with paint and flooring, many of the rooms sat empty, devoid of furniture or light fixtures, or anything except the hope that one day the whole house, not just their few little ground rooms, would be full of life and light.

Jean's birthday and a cake they couldn't afford

 And a good thing too, Jean was having a birthday and would soon be starting to school. As a present they bought him furniture for his new room.








 But Cora was still worried about money. Yves tried to reassure her, confident in his growing skill and too prideful to admit that they might be struggling. Also maybe a little too focused on his work to realize he wasn't even really getting dressed each day, just stumbling down the stairs to the studio in whatever he had passed out in the night before.

     All I could think of while watching them fret was of the common meme making fun of the HGTV show "Househunters." Click the link if you're unfamiliar with the joke.

"Hi, I'm Cora, a home gardener and this is my husband Yves, a freelance sculptor."

You get the idea.

To compensate, he spent even more time in his studio, and she saw him only for a few minutes here and there, in passing, at night, in the early hours, whenever they could squeeze in a cup of coffee together. And once again, even those few fleeting moments were enough to add another small, looming reason to be worried: she was pregnant again. 
      In a moment of frivolity she had taken Jean to the autumn fair and gotten her face painted. Now, in the early morning, with the reality of a second pregnancy and even more bills piling up in the face of the oncoming winter, that one tiny act seemed stupid and wasteful.

Cora with Rickard.

     Their second son, Rickard, was born in the last week of autumn. Her garden was barely producing, spending more time dormant than workable. Yves, too, like the roots of her garden seeking nourishment below ground, spent more time in his basement studio than above it, frequently napping on a small futon down there instead of coming up to bed. He would come up to grab a plate of leftovers from the fridge, or to shower or use the toilet, but then he was back at work.

Then, the unthinkable happened.

 

His Last Painting

The last painting of Caspian Bates, son of Fedaykin Bates. Died peacefully in the garden at the beautiful age of 121 days. Succeeded by his son, Jupiter Bates, and his grandchildren Seth and Chani Bates.

A Slap in the Face

I said once in an earlier post that I was thankful Sims never had fertility issues or miscarriages. I never considered child death to even be a possibility. I knew that if you didn't take care of the children, social services would come and take them away, but I never knew that the children could actually die. Even pregnant women seem to have a sort of immunity against death.

I say all this because the other day, I watched one of my Sim children drown. No, I did not trap him in the pool intentionally. In the Sims 3 you have to actually build walls around the pool to trap them in, since simply removing the ladders does not prevent them from exiting the pool (they are able to climb out of the sides of the pool). No, he just floundered and died.

Truthfully, I didn't even know he was in the pool. I was on the other end of the house, watching Fedaykin teach baby Marcus how to walk, and occasionally glancing over at Caspian painting in the living room. It was an otherwise calm and collected Sunday afternoon. Suddenly, the event camera jerks me over to the pool, just in time to see Pye slip beneath the water. I paused the game to stare in shock at his corpse, just suspended in the water. The knowledge that there was nothing I could do, that he was dead, that I had played for several hours without a save so I couldn't reload, that all the plans I had made for him were now useless. Pye was gone.

 I un-paused the game and watched as the Grim Reaper showed up and most of the family ran outside to mourn and cry in shock. I have decided that this shot is one of the saddest and most horrifying screenshots I have ever taken in any of my Sims games. Pye, the child, begging for his life from the Reaper, who watches coldly while the child's grave lies between them. I will admit, I cried a little bit, not because I particularly liked Pye or anything, but because he was a child. A child.

Forgive me if the deaths of children hit me particularly hard.

Forgive me as well if the idea of a child, who for whatever reason must die, dies by drowning - is also particularly painful - I had a close brush with drowning as a child and was narrowly saved by one of my little sisters and my dad.

I suppose I had been living in this dreamworld where I felt the Sim children were immortal, unable to be harmed by fire or flood or famine, and that the worst thing that could happen was to be placed into state care. It was quite the slap in the face to learn otherwise.

Not something I ever wanted to see.

It's Not a Party Unless Someone Dies

So to celebrate her engagement to JC, Sybil really really wanted to have a bachelorette party. This was a feature introduced in the Generations expac which I hadn't  tried yet, so I gave it a shot, for curiousity's sake. I invited her aunts and any other young females she was more than moderately acquainted with, and they all went to the bar owned by JC. Turns out he was working there that night, so that was a bit ... awkward. Not that Sybil was planning on doing anything unsavory or unfaithful, mind you, it just put that nagging feeling of being watched in everyone's mind. "Don't get too crazy, the groom's watching!"

But he wasn't paying any attention, engrossed as he was in washing the dirty glasses. I couldn't get over his outfit though.  That sense of style.... if it can be called that - I will never get over it. Poor man. Or maybe, poor everyone else and he's just a fashion genius. I still don't know exactly what material that suit was supposed to be made out of. It was nice to see him trying to be a productive member of society though, instead of just lazing about.

Regardless, everyone showed up, even a bunch of women she hadn't invited, and the bouncer decided she'd rather play foosball than guard the door, so all sorts of women were there jumping around and giving toasts to Sybil and her future with the bartender. Everyone seemed to be having a good time, and then I got the notification that the 'Male Cowboy Dancers' had arrived. Oh boy. Who asked for them? I was afraid things would get ugly, what with JC downstairs mixing drinks while Sybil slow-danced with the cowboy, but no one seemed to care much, much to my surprise. Perhaps JC knew there was nothing harmful to it? Still, I don't know. All I know is when JC and Sybil try to slow-dance, they do nothing but step on each other's toes. This guy was a dancing master and had her spinning in circles, bending backwards, all sorts of things. All while hip-hop blared through the bar's sound system. It was quite the juxtaposition.


And while I may have complained about JC's outfit of choice, Sybil's surprised me. I had designed a nice little party dress, thinking I could get her to wear that to the party, but as soon as it officially started and her guests started showing up, she changed into this short little number and I was so surprised I let her keep it instead of forcing her back to the outfit I had planned. Huh, the way this game works sometimes if I had tried to change her clothes back that would have probably somehow ended the party and everyone would have left five minutes after they had shown up.


Apparently, my legacy family cannot have a party without someone dying. It's happened three times now, no matter where the party is held, one of the guests always decides to die. I've no idea who it was this time, all I know is everyone was upstairs dancing, even JC, when all of a sudden someone decided the dance floor was the best place to go. Everyone was quite shocked, and the look on the dancer's face in the back made me giggle. He looked so sad.

JC looked pretty upset too, and if this had been a game with more real world problems, I can imagine him thinking "Oh I hope I don't get sued for this..." I mean, the whole town knowing that someone died  at your bar isn't exactly the best advertisement. Unless he redoes the whole design of it in a dark gothic look, and then it can be a 'haunted' bar. I wonder if I could mover some of the remains from the cemetery over so that some ghosts might decide to hang out? Or is that sacrilegious, to exhume and move remains simply to add atmosphere to a bar? Might drum up business a bit. Hmm. Not a bad idea......



The Grim Reaper showed up and collected her, whoever she was, and everyone soon went back to partying, despite some lingering bad moodlets. But the despair didn't last for long, and soon everyone fine, dancing and chatting and toting their drinks around. I thought the party was going really well, minus the death, of course (but you can't help everything). I was hoping the whole time that despite the death the guests would think it had been a great party since that was Sybil's wish at the moment - for everyone to have a good time. I wonder if the woman who died had fun?

Anyway, they ended the night with JC spraying Sybil with a bottle of champagne. Sometimes I love the facial expressions in this game, and JC's in this pic is priceless. He's having so much fun ruining her dress.

The next morning, which coincidentally was Valentine's Day (or Love Day as it's called in the game), Sybil and JC ran off to the nearby beach to get married in a small private ceremony at dawn, but it started hailing (silly unpredictable spring weather) and they were forced to retreat to the nearby covered shelter to finish the ceremony.

She's pregnant by now, and I'm waiting to see what the little bundle of genetics looks like this time. I'm hoping it's a boy so that I can name him Perrin in honor of the golden gene-marker I've managed to keep in the bloodline thus far, but we'll see. That is, assuming he has the marker. Sometimes it skips a generation or so.

Yes, he really did wear that to the wedding. I had to giggle.

Two Things

  So far, two things have happened in the Morel household. Aegon has died, this time of old age and completely naturally, in his sleep at the ripe age of 95 days. Mojo did not plead for him to stay this time, although you can see from the plumbob in the screenshot that he was witness to the death, if rather out of sight behind the desk. Aegon's wife Jodie, who had been separated from him for a while, had moved back into the house now that Virgil's other five siblings are grown and on their own, and she and Virgil watched Aegon leave. I am trying to remember how many sims have died in this room, in that bed, passing in their sleep. At least three, now, with Aegon. I should probably redecorate or something. Maybe it's the wallpaper that's killing them.

 Virgil mourned his passing after a quiet graveside funeral. It is still the depths of winter, and the snow was so deep it came up to the seats of the park benches. I had the Morels buy the cemetery when they first came into their vast wealth, and since then I have rearranged it a bit so that they have a private, fenced area, shaded by oaks in the summer and lit by lamplight in the winter, where all the ancestors and forebears of the family are interred. So far I haven't put any siblings in plots, but only because they usually end up moving out before they die, and it's impossible to procure ashes off another lot.

Jodie, Aegon's widow, has been a bit senile lately and has taken to wandering about in the snow. Then, rather unexpectedly, this happened:

I've no idea where Jodie is, or how long she will be gone. But for now, the Others have her.