I have repeatedly observed the transformation of mere existential misery into outright hell by betrayal and deceit. The barely manageable crisis of a parent’s terminal illness can be turned, for example, into something awful beyond description by the unseemly and petty squabbling of the sufferer’s adult children. Obsessed by the unresolved past, they gather like ghouls around the deathbed, forcing tragedy into an unholy dalliance with cowardice and resentment.
