They told me that my uncle would never get married. Or perhaps no one told me, really; I just assumed. He’s a free spirit, a videogame aficionado, the calm and collected bass player in a chaotic and disorganized rock band. They told me my uncle would never get married, but he found love in the form of a beautiful high school English teacher (as shocking a place as love has ever been found), and he married her. And for my uncle, there was mercy.

They told my aunt she could die. She’d been diagnosed with breast cancer and gone under the knife, through treatments so awful I couldn’t understand them then, and I don’t care to try now. She quickly became frail and thin, and as I was still so young when I met her, I didn’t know her any other way. Luckily, she was diagnosed early, and the doctors did their work well. My aunt went into remission and soon we were told that her cancer was gone entirely. And for my aunt, there was mercy.

They told my aunt she could never have children. When my uncle called, my sisters and I gasped in shock at the least expected yet most wonderful news we had ever heard. Nine months later my aunt gave birth to a healthy baby girl. And for my tiny cousin, sleeping happily in the next room as I type this, there was mercy.

They told me that my aunt had cancer. I had heard that many years ago, and I hadn’t altogether understood, and she had lived through the ordeal. Now when I heard it, I understood all too well, and my treacherous understanding of death brings icy fear closer to my heart than any doctor’s chart ever could. The charts don’t help. I am told that my aunt’s disease is now fully terminal, that whether she dies of it in a month or a year, she will die of it, yet I sit here typing and I am fine. And for me, there is mercy.

No one has told my baby cousin why she will never have any brothers. It’s not like she could understand it right now, anyway, but eventually someone will have to, and I wouldn’t wish that task upon my direst foe. The universe has crushingly told my uncle unbearable news, and told him to bear it, without filling him in on why he has to. My aunt has been told not only that her present will soon be over, but also that her imagined future was a lie; she won’t have more kids, or grandkids, or see the places she wanted to see, or laugh at the jokes I will eventually think up and wish I could tell her. For now, my aunt is alive, and I thank fate for that limited future. Yet there was mercy for my uncle and my cousin. There was even mercy for my aunt, for the most achingly briefest of times. But in the end, there is no mercy for my cousin’s brothers; the nonexistent loved ones whose imagined loss predates my aunt’s demise, the left hook before the finishing blow. There is no mercy for the future that my aunt and uncle deserve.

They told me my aunt is dying, and I am asking you why.