When bad things happen to good people
It is very much a cliche that whenever something bad happens, be it in the world or in our own lives, we human beings start to question how there can be a god. It is a very stupid, pointless line of thought to say that such-and-such a bad thing is proof that a god does not exist for if one did it would have prevented it, and I know all the arguments for why this is not the case. Free will, the presence of evil in the world, we all have our cross to bear, pray to the Lord and he will help you carry it. Etc, etc, etc. Nevertheless, it is sometimes a very tempting line of thought, one which it is easy to succumb to. Certainly, I have been finding it so since yesterday. I went to church last night with my family, but I refused to pray. If God exists, I am no longer prepared to talk to him.
I know that everyone has to cope with bad things in their lives, and I know that they can’t be shared out in a mathematical manner so that everyone gets their fair share. Life isn’t like that, and some people will end up with more bad luck than others. But sometimes it just seems ridiculously unjust how the nicest people in the world have all the crap thrown at them, whilst the most objectionable conduct happy and peaceful lives.
I have an aunt, whom I am very close to. Firstly, because she is my only aunt. Secondly, because she is only 14 years older than me. We are closer in age than her and my mother, and in the past people have often mistaken us for sisters. I have grown up with her as a role model. And she is an excessively nice person, far too nice in fact. She is the sort of person who makes jam for church bake sales. I have to be careful in front of her because I have a tendency to be bitchy, to slag people off. My aunt refuses to see bad in anyone, and has sometimes been slightly horrified by conversations between my mother, my sister and I about the failings of mutual acquaintances.
Unfortunately, my aunt has not had the happiest life. It started well; she got married to a guy we all love and settled down in a nice house in one of the posher parts of Birmingham. I met her future husband for the first time when I was eight and living at my grandparents house whilst my mother had surgery on her neck. I can remember my sister and I sticking our heads round the net curtains in an attempt to see the strange man who was apparently our aunt’s new boyfriend and who was coming to pick her up and take her to the cinema. I think we were probably jealous, initially, that there was someone else we had to share her time with, and then we met him and discovered - to our absolute delight - that he was bald on the top of his head, and he somehow became the most desirable playmate in the family. I’m not sure, on reflection, why we found his baldness so amusing, but for some reason we did. In retrospect we were probably unintentionally cruel - I can remember making him a birthday card with a hair brush on it - but fortunately he always seemed to have a good sense of humour 
When they got married I was ten and had the honour of being the chief bridesmaid. The marriage remained childless for years - we assumed that that was the way they wanted it - but suddenly towards the end of 1999 my aunt announced that she was pregnant. We all began thinking happy baby thoughts, and it was a welcome piece of good news for the whole family. Unfortunately, the year 2000 was not to be our year. We toasted the millenium with lemsips, having all been struck down by a nasty dose of flu, and that set the tone for the months which followed. Whilst my grandmother slowly wasted away and my mother disappeared to hospital for severe abdominal surgery, my aunt went for a scan and was told her baby was not growing sufficiently.
Initially we all tried to kid ourselves that this wasn’t a big deal, but as time went on it became more and more evident that it was. Iit became apparent that there were certain deformities and it was recommended that my aunt have an abortion. My aunt is not the sort of person who could ever have an abortion, and so the medical staff decided to take advantage of her to conduct an experiment. Perhaps this sounds cruel on my part, because I know she wouldn’t change the way things panned out, but if they had just left her to her own devices, she would have miscarried pretty early on. Traumatic, sure, but so much better than what followed. Instead, the doctors (who *knew* the child could never survive) led her to believe that it could, and pumped her full of a horrible cocktail of drugs in order to try to keep the foetus alive. Eventually the child was born by Caesarian at eight months and just about lived long enough to be baptised. My aunt’s health never recovered from the experience, and when she and my uncle went for counselling, all they achieved was to reduce the psychologist to tears. Meanwhile the doctors at the hospital had the honour of two records - delivering the first baby in the country to be born alive with this particular genetic condition, and delivering the smallest ever live baby at that particular hospital.
A couple more miscarriages followed, and the pair of them were desperately unhappy until a few years later my aunt fell pregnant again and everything seemed to go smoothly. She gave birth to a beautiful baby boy … and two hours later had a dramatic haemorrhage which left her fighting for her life in intensive care for the best part of a fortnight. I shouldn’t put other people’s medical conditions on my blog, I shouldn’t really be saying any of this in public, but it was the same incompetent doctors in the same incompetent hospital who mismanaged the labour in such a way so as to make that outcome inevitable. That’s not my speculation, they admitted it themselves.
There followed a few happier years as my aunt and uncle were overjoyed with their little son. My cousin is a delightful child; a little spoilt sometimes, but I can understand why and he’s so good-natured that I don’t think there will be any lasting ill-effects. I’ve felt sorry for him, however, because he only has one grandparent. Both those on our side of the family are dead, and my uncle’s mother has been suffering from Alzheimers for so long that she’s never successfully managed to learn his name. Her condition is now so advanced that she can’t remember to swallow, and my uncle has been pretty devastated over the last year as she was transferred to a nursing home.
Meanwhile, he’s been having a small health problem of his own. A tiny thing, the sort of thing you would put off going to the doctor about, and in fact none of us took it very seriously. I haven’t seen him for a couple of months, but I knew he’d had a few joint injuries from playing football, and I assumed it was related to that. My mother may even have said it was related to that, I can’t remember.
Then the day before I went on holiday, he had a hospital appointment. The result is that he has been diagnosed with a progressive, degenerative disease for which there is no cure. An unpredictable disease, such that no one knows if he will have 10 healthy years or have no quality of life remaining after two. He doesn’t want people to know, and so I’m not going to go into more detail here; most members of my family are still in the dark. But it is a diagnosis which leaves little room for hope. It is the sort of condition one might reasonably expect at 70, but he is only 43.
My aunt called my mother when she found out, but my mother was in Germany helping my sister move home, and she kept it a secret both from her and me until yesterday morning when we were all home from holiday. I was grateful that she did that, because it was such a terrible shock I don’t think I would have gone on holiday had I known. It’s mind-blowingly dreadful - I still can’t comprehend either that it’s happened, or how anyone is going to cope with it. The circumstances mean there is a limit to the details I know, but I know enough to see that three lives have just been destroyed. It makes no sense; if there is a supreme being, it should have seen that these people had already had enough suffering for one lifetime. And if there isn’t, the laws of probability alone should prevent so much bad luck happening to one family. I am angry - very, very angry - and there is nothing I can do.