That makes sense! Depressing is something that, like a lot of elements of a work, should be applied responsibly. I do think that keeping some element pertaining to the protag's passing would have made some sense, though; he was watching a tape of his entire life, or at least that's what I thought based on your inspiration.
From the angle of him finding reason to keep on trucking in form of the bear, I suppose that bear showing up in real life but not the tape is him trying to go against the downer fate set before him and instead make improvements in his life... much like how you decided to make a less downer ending and instead go for something less excessively upsetting.