"Deserve"

Over the course of my marriage people from time to time would ask me How did your father-in-law die? The answer is: lung cancer. To which 99% of the time the inquiry shifts to: Oh. Did he smoke?

Because therein lies the prejudice and judgment—what the inquirers are inferring is: People who smoke deserve lung cancer.

On a beautiful warm Friday night on the first day of summer a 71 year old woman ran a stop sign and collided with my brother who just happened to be riding his motorcycle. My brother was not speeding or driving recklessly in any way. He just happened to be in the path of a woman ignoring traffic laws. Anyone, including a woman pushing a stroller or a 9 year old on a bicycle who would have intersected with her vehicle at that moment in time instead of my brother on his motorcycle would have been seriously injured if not dead.

Yet my brother, who sustains major orthopedic injury and is lucky to be alive, was met with the following inquiry from nearly every single health care worker who stepped into his critical care room: Why were you riding a motorcycle?

The implication was: People who ride motorcycles deserve injury.

Yet in the adjacent hospital room to my brother lied a woman who was left for dead on the side of the road in a hit and run accident. I had to wonder if those same heath care workers asked this woman Why were you jogging near the side of the road? I had to wonder if those same people asked rape victims Why was your skirt so short? Or the person who was mugged Why were you out and about?

And eventually after repeatedly hearing my brother’s wrongful indictment I could not stand it anymore. I felt the need to defend my brother. So when the physical therapist asked Why were you riding a motorcycle? I very nicely chimed in Or the better question might be: Why was the 71 year old woman who ran the stop sign and hit my brother allowed on the road?

Clearly embarrassed—the PT worker said Oh I am sorry I did not realize that she hit you…I thought it was the other way around.

I said nothing more—and neither did she.

And my father-in-law never smoked a day in his life. Lung cancer simply chose him-- just like lung cancer did not choose to kill either of my grandfathers or my grandmother or my father who between them must have smoked for two hundred years.

No one deserves cancer.

Victims do not deserve blame.

“Deserve” is a notion no human has the right to own. And the world would be a better place if thinking was engaged before speaking and all judgment was left up to God.