This song gets me every time.
I was a huge Squaresoft fan as a kid; Final Fantasy was my favorite thing on the planet and I even tried to buy every Square game that had reached the US. When Square revealed a crossover game featuring my beloved Final Fantasy characters, featuring dumb kid movie Disney characters, I wasn't having any of it. Despite my absolute revulsion towards the idea of a Disney Final Fantasy, I ended up finding this song and listening to it. Even if the game sounded dumb, I couldn't deny the music was beautiful--at least this one track was.
Not long after this game came out, my dog died. He was a scrappy little Maltese, but he'd had seizures and choked to death when he eating when one came on. He'd been having seizures for awhile; he'd run to me every time he felt one coming on and I'd pet him and tell him it'd be okay until they passed. He was my best friend in the world at the time--he felt like my only real friend, honestly. I was at church with my younger brother when he died. We came home and I remember my mom saying, "We have to tell you something..." I was devastated (even more than twenty years later, I still get sad thinking about it). All of us were heartbroken. He was a member of the family and we all had great memories with him (except my dad, because he hated dogs and ours loved to bark at him when he tried to kiss my mom
).
The night that he died, I decided to play this song while trying to deal with what had happened. It both broke my heart and helped mend it at the same time. There's something so sad about it while also being so hopeful. It gave me a place to grieve. It's funny, as I queued it up I thought, "I'm about to ruin this song for myself for the rest of my life." I knew I was going to think of my dog every time I heard it, but I didn't really care because I didn't think I'd ever bother playing Disney Final Fantasy.
A couple years later I played Kingdom Hearts on the recommendation of a friend from church. After mocking it relentlessly for about 10 hours, something clicked. I didn't think it was dumb anymore, I thought it was kind of awesome. By the end of the game, I was bawling my eyes out and eagerly awaiting the release of Kingdom Hearts II. And despite the fact that I originally related Dearly Beloved to my dog's death, I don't think about it when I hear this song anymore. I think about all the great memories I've made playing this series for the past twenty years. I'm grateful this series was here when I was at my lowest.
Games really are the best.
