Factual Story-Telling

You know how they say, bad things always happen to the best people?
I always thought that it was just something people said, like when dickhead kids die because they were being stupid, and their mothers come on TV and cry about how “sweet their baby” was, when really, he was the scum of the earth. But it's true, the best of us always suffer more than others, it’s a fact of life, it fucking sucks, but there you have it.

Alison was the epitome of the girl next-door. Raised on a sheep station, she took everything on the chin, her spirit never wavering.  She’s easy to imagine.

Now imagine her husband, with whom she had the first child, deciding that she alone was not enough for him. Imagine a woman brave enough to start fresh, with nothing but her pride, her son and the drive to solider on. 

Destitute, she moves to an industrial estate, where a man strikes up a conversation with her son. Peter, a man who had also endured the cruel sting of unrequited love, invites them to the beach.  As fate would have it, Alison’s family knew Peter and assured her he was as kind-hearted and gentle as I know him to be. In what seems like a fairy-tale ending, they soon married.

The fates however, were cunning; an eye for an eye as they say.

Shortly after, a son was born. Whilst in the womb, he had swallowed copious amounts of meconium - his stomach pumped three times to start his tiny life. Caden is now autistic. The stress of an autistic child is a stress very few can handle, even those as un-phased as Alison.  She took it in her stride, his mannerisms and tantrums saw him unable to reach milestones, boys his age quickly surpassing him. She learnt how to build him up, and redirect his focus. Scooby-Doo was his favourite.

Again, her tower of strength crumbled. Showering one day was when she saw it. The lump in her breast was an extremely rare and aggressive cancer.  In less than one hour she was pumped full of poison. Nothing was to be done, a mastectomy followed shortly after as did liver, bone and spine cancer.  Diseases that had killed her mother, had now come to claim her.
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During her treatment, her first son Brandon, turned 18, a big event in any young man's life. To celebrate, the family came together, because deep down they knew it would be the last time.

In what seemed to be another vicious blow, driving home from the gathering, Alison’s father collided with a semi-trailer. He suffered a heart attack and died minutes before the collision. He was pronounced dead at the scene.  Just grateful to have lived to see her son turn 18, she received the news of her father’s death.  At long last, the eye of the storm loomed overhead. 

It was terminal, and she claimed her life insurance to celebrate. Most would have spent it frivolously, but she only wanted three things – a white picket fence, a shed for her husband’s tools and a flash car, a car she bought with no intention for herself. She later gifted the car to Peter.

People always say they want to attend their funeral, see who comes, see who cries, but no one ever wants to plan it. It was distraction from the inevitable. She bought her families suits and ties, picked her flowers and laid out her outfit - the day was closing in and she would have done anything to make it easier on her boys.

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Soon, I would see her at Christmas; she didn’t make her jelly biscuits that year. Her long red hair was gone, replaced with wispy strands. To this day I regret feeling the way I did when I saw her, I felt ashamed, not of her, but of the fact that I was fine and she was not. Naturally, the family's grandmother died a week later. 

The storm was now howling. One night Peter found her,still, the stroke she had just had, incapacitating her. He called the ambulance.  She hung on resiliently in hospital for weeks, determined she would see her 41^st birthday and her son's 13^th. She did. The day after her sons thirteenth birthday, my Aunty Allison died. Death marking the end of her suffering.

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I cannot bring myself to believe in God, a God who strives to love unequivocally, when fortune is gifted to so few.  A God that would administer blow after blow, with disregard for an entire family, is no God of mine.

When vicious series of events unravel, so, so, quickly, it’s hard not to regret every single time you looked at someone and felt uncomfortable,  and didn’t know what to say to make it ok.  It’s hard not to regret being so wrapped up in your life, you forget about another’s and it’s hard to live with the fact you felt so abandoned, that you couldn’t cry. 

Those jelly biscuits have yet to return to the Christmas table, the white-picket fence remains unfinished and Caden still plays Scooby-Doo, over and over.

The best always suffer most.