Fighting cancer at 75, she fell in love with her grandson’s fantasy role-playing game.
Twitter user Antoine H. said goodbye to his grandmother this week — but his online farewell introduced this amazing woman to the whole world, as he told the charming story of the new pastime that helped her through her last year of life as she fought pancreatic cancer: Dungeons & Dragons. Antoine taught her how to role play in the D&D fantasy world, and she fell in love with the adventure and creativity she found in the game.
My grandmother passed away. Her funerals were today, but here I’d like to talk about the most important thing I couldn’t spend too much time on in her eulogy: her love for Dungeons & Dragons. #DnD
— Antoine H. (@AntnHz) August 23, 2019
In a Twitter thread that went viral, Antoine told how his grandmother threw herself into the game with all her heart, creating the perfect character for herself: a druidic forest gnome named Terminatur, with a goose for a best friend. She drew a picture of her vision of Terminatur and even improved on the drawing over the months, adding color and panache.
That night, she does something that even I never expected: she goes on the Internet and reads every piece of lore she can find about gnomes. She barely knew how to Google, and yet here she was, browsing Wikipedia articles and D&D fansites.
— Antoine H. (@AntnHz) August 23, 2019
@AntnHz noted that in his grandmother’s final months, as chemotherapy sapped her strength and her cancer worsened, she couldn’t play as often. But she still dipped into the world of D&D when she could. The game gave her an escape from her pain and something to look forward to even as her life was coming to an end.
Less than a month ago, the cancer took over her whole body. She was hospitalized and stayed there until her passing, on Wednesday morning. The last thing she told me was “Never change, never loose your family spirit, and keep on playing Dungeons & Dragons”.
— Antoine H. (@AntnHz) August 23, 2019
Read the full Twitter thread for the whole lovely story.
