Posted by:
puck
(
)
Date: February 22, 2012 07:43PM
So quick recap here: I've moved a bajillion miles away from everyone in my family, to the UK (which is awesome, btw). Well on my way to becoming a lawyer [barrister] here. Left mormonism when I was 16. My parents were converts. I'm not very close with my family, except with my brother...until he went on his mission, where he currently is.
Last week, I got a strange email from my mother, which said, "Call me ASAP." I assumed somebody was dead, but this was luckily not the case.
Well, actually, someone was dead. My stupid-ass cousin killed somebody. This is dumb on so many levels, the least of which being that both he and the victim are gang members.
The stupidest part is probably that it's a death-penalty state he's being tried in. But I digress.
The facts of the case don't matter. What does matter is that this has led to epic amounts of soul-searching in my family. The immediate family being mormon, and the extended are all lapsed catholics. My mom and sister have spent the last week either praying for him, or emailing me legal questions.
Now, it's funny, because everyone was so against my becoming a lawyer, because it apparently means I'll never get married and that's the only important thing in life. Suddenly it's great that I have some legal knowledge.
Anyway, dear mom has decided that this is all due to a lack of morals that can only be found in church. I tried to dissuade her of this and said that this has nothing to do with morals, but with law, and that my cousin broke the law and has to go to court over it. She insists that his heart is pure, and since he's gone to confession and such that everything is okay because god's forgiven him.
But...no. Just no. I can't even articulate how much this bothers me.
Admittedly, I'm deeply conflicted about this whole thing. My cousin is a couple years older than me, but we mostly grew up together until his parents got divorced and he moved away with his mom, in high school. Neither of us came from good backgrounds, but his family was actually better off than mine. I don't understand what went wrong with him, though to be fair I haven't seen him in about 5 years. I don't understand how I'm a lawyer and he's going to be on death row. He was nicer than I was when we were growing up. People always liked him better. He taught me how to throw a curveball. I taught him how to shoot a snapshot. I don't understand what happened.
I guess it's times like this where it's very, very easy to be religious, or to believe in pre-destination of some sort. My family explains everything away with saying he "lost his faith," but that's no explanation. I'm way further away from religion than he was. I'm not sure I believe in inherent morality, other than the "don't be a dick" rule.
My little brother, the missionary, emailed me mom about it and said this is what happens when you don't read the scriptures every day. What the fuck happened to my brother? he'd never say something like that.
I'm not sure what I'm trying to get at. I think I'm angry about this, but I'm usually a really even-tempered person. I don't know what I'm angry at, exactly. My cousin used to be so good, and now he's done the worst thing a person can do. He's 26 years old. He's got an automatic death-penalty case. What the fuck happened. And why do people hide behind "faith?"