What if....

What if you were faced with a life-threatening illness and you had to make a decision (in a few short hours, possibly days) which would determine how long the remainder of your life might be? 

Would you know where to do go to get information?

Would you know if that information was reliable?

Would you know what the information-provider's agenda was?

This is what newly-diagnosed, critically ill individuals face and some face it alone, because they don't have partners in their life or because they don't have families or because the relatives are too far away or for some other reason.

I'm not offering up any kind of pity-party for anyone, but I am suggesting that as this fragile green earth spins faster and faster, we seem to have less and less time for our neighbors, acquaintances and even family.

Before I headed out West, I received a phone call from a neighbor to tell me that he and his wife were temporarily moving into "assisted living " quarters because of her cancer treatments and her care requirements which were beyond his capabilities. They have family living nearby and they have friends and neighbors like me. But clearly he wanted me to know that when I didn't see them around that they were open to having visitors in the new place. I was deeply touched and will certainly go and see them when I return.

And it brought home to me, in yet another way, that we are interconnected. That each smile, each touch, each effort made on behalf of another does have value.

So if you are reading this and you know someone who is facing a difficult time, perhaps you will be led to offer up some of your time to do something to ease their challenge. Not because someday you might be facing your own mountain, but because today is all we have... and what we give is our presentness... our being... and letting another living man or woman or child know that they have been seen or heard.