Fairness

Feb. 6^th

“This book says, ‘life isn’t fair’…There’s death coming up, and you better understand this: some of the wrong people die…The wrong people die, some of them, and the reason is this: life is not fair.” “It’s just fairer than death, that’s all.”

William Goldman, The Princess Bride

Today is my mother’s birthday. My mother has now reached the age of 81. Thirty years older than K.B. My father turned 80 last November, beating the odds stacked against him with all his health issues. Is it “fair” when some people get to live so long and then tragic accidents take the lives of those relatively young like K.B.? Of course not. But fairness is an illusion. It does not exist in this life.

Is it “fair” that we were born in Canada to lives that would be considered ones of incredible privilege to someone struggling to exist in a Mumbai slum? Is it “fair” that K.B. got to live 51 years of life when some people see their babies die after mere hours or days?

No. The notion that somehow we are “owed” certain things like long life or a comfortable life is utterly false, so there is no point feeling angry that other people will get to grow old while K.B. was deprived of that chance.

And yet, there is still that impulse to yell out, “She was cheated! CHEATED! All the years she was supposed to have had with Chris, all the books she was supposed to write, all the cakes she was supposed to bake…not to mention the weddings of her children she was supposed to attend, the grandbabies she was meant to cuddle!”

I don’t know how I can get over this feeling of bitterness over a future denied. I understand it is folly and arrogance to ever think we can see what is ahead for us. But the sudden destruction of all those dreams she herself had and we had for her is not the way any of us would have seen her story turning out.