" As a young priest, I'd had a father scream at me once. I was working in a hospital. He'd just lost his son. I thought my clerical collar gave me the right to speak, so right after the doctors called time of death, I went and assured him his infant son was in paradise. Stupid. And of all people, I should have known better. At age fourteen, I lost my mother to a rare form of cancer similar to what struck that father's son, and every empty condolence I received after my mother's death only deepened my angry teenage grief. But platitudes are most appealing when they're least appropriate.

This father had watched his healthy child waste away to nothing. It must have been maddening. The months of random emergency room visits. The brief rallies and the inevitable relapses. The inexorable course of the disease...

...And then I came along, after the chemotherapy, after the bankrupting bills and the deterioration of his and his wife's careers, after the months of hoping and despair, after every possible medical violation had denied his child grace even in death. And I dared suggest some good had come of it? It was unbearable. It was disgusting. It was vile. "

― Phil Klay