What You Do Speaks So Loudly I Can't Hear A Word You're Saying

 "Standing in a garage doesn't make you a car anymore than going to church makes you religious."

Now, you may wonder why that particular quote.  It's simple:  I just love it and to me it speaks of people who say they are one thing while their actions say something else.

Years ago, when I started my nonprofit for grieving children, I went to a special event for charitable organizations.  While seated at a table to publicize my organization, a woman came by.  Upon reading the poster describing what we did, she clutched her fists to her chest, and said, with much pathos, "I feel too much and I care too deeply to ever do that."  As she fled from our table, I turned to the colleague seated to my left and said, "As opposed to those of us who feel nothing, don't care at all, and do it."

The woman didn't fool me.  She was only interested in her own feelings. Had she truly cared, she would be compelled to act.

This brings me to people who abandon their loved ones at the end of life because it is "too hard for [them]" or they "don't want to remember [their] mother, father, sister, brother, friend, that way."  They are not more caring or more sensitive than those of us who drop everything and show up.  They are focused only on their own feelings and not considering what their presence would mean to the person dying.  I want to be kind and say they are weak or it really is too much for them.  But not one of us finds it easy to watch someone we love die.  And it is even more difficult when we are the ones watching our loved one struggling to hold on to life as he or she waits to say good-bye to the adult child who will never come.

I want to say this to all of you who think you can't be at the bedside of your dying relative:  Go.  Please go.  It isn't easy, but if you don't go, you miss the opportunity to be present at a truly sacred moment.  You'll  like yourself a whole lot more if you know you did the right and loving thing.