Recently my email inbox has been filled with updates from three friends who are sick and using Caringbridge.com to update everyone on their status. For those who have never used the site, it is an amazingly helpful way to keep friends and family informed about your own or a loved one’s illness, organize visitors, meals, and help of all kinds. It is one of the wonders of the internet, that though I am geographically far from two of these friends, I can get daily updates about their progress, and leave them short notes and prayers in return.
It is not always easy to know how to interact with a friend or family member who is seriously sick. When so you ask questions about their illness? When do you bring a meal? When do you leave them alone? the New York Times op Ed columnist David Brooks addressed someone these questions last week in his column The Art of Presence. His basic message is: Just be present for those who need you.
This advice is ancient. The Talmud teaches that when you visit someone who is ill you take away 1/60th of their illness, just by visiting and being present. It is not about curing them, but about helping them heal in some small way.
Being present is not as easy as it sounds. If it were, we would not need to be reminded to do it by sources ancient and modern. Seeing a loved one suffer is painful. It is natural to want to run as far away as possible. Self-doubt easily creeps in, I wonder if I am saying the right thing, am I here are the right time, should I have brought food, something to read, should I tell a joke or be serious?
The answers to these questions, of course, depend on the person you are seeing the situation they are in. One friend has made it clear she wants prayers from friends and family. While another wants to keep things lighthearted and humorous. I have to take my cues from them about what to write and what to say. I also have to learn to put aside my anxieties. Better for me to say the wrong thing at a particular moment and apologize when I realize my mistake, then not to have been there at all.
So if you are struggling like I am with what to do or say, here are some tips on how to be present:
• Take time to really listen to the other person.
• Drop your expectations of what you are going to do or say.
• Be here now. Allow yourself not to be distracted.
• Be natural.
• Be patient.
• Try to listen with an open heart. Do not judge the other person.
• Try to sit in that other person’s place. Where is he? What is she feeling?
• Use your empathy and your compassion.
Now, just do it! Make some soup, send a card, pick up the phone. You can alleviate a bit of someone’s suffering just be letting them know you care. Be present for them.
Talmud
Pronounced: TALL-mud, Origin: Hebrew, the set of teachings and commentaries on the Torah that form the basis for Jewish law. Comprised of the Mishnah and the Gemara, it contains the opinions of thousands of rabbis from different periods in Jewish history.
