Editor’s Note: This column first appeared in the July 31 edition of The Post-Journal sans photos.

When bad things happen in life, we find out who cares for us, truly, and who doesn’t. It’s that simple. But finding out can be a painful experience. Dealing with such hard truths afterwards can be mighty tough too.

Recently my 93-year-old mother died after five years of increasing dementia and four years in a nursing home dementia ward. Ironically, she was happy there, and as far as we could see over a long period of time received competent care from medical professionals and extraordinary care from aides and caretakers. She was in their hands daily, literally, from bathroom needs, to dressing, to eating, to going to bed and rising for the day. The aides and caretakers – no doubt those paid the least – made our mother’s daily existence not only a tolerable experience but a good one. Sometimes mother was even joyful and full of joie de vivre. She liked a ride in the car, and she loved it when family visited her. But she was all right on her own there, too, which is a gift to her and to her loved ones.

As she lay dying, we gathered round and prayed over her, sang her songs, repeated psalms and tried to keep our own spirits up. Every day mother’s physical condition changed. At first, she seemed to be sleeping. But as her body began to quit, it went through a series of postures and utterances, most of which we could not understand. A few times she opened her eyes – the once startling blue sheathed with in a white pall. She was given morphine every few hours. These hours were the sweetest and the most awful hours of my life.

In moments when I could not stand one more second of watching my mother die with agonizing slowness day after day, I ran for refuge outside to the grassy area and gardens just outside room 66, her room for many years, to sit and breathe in fresh air. The flowers were all lovely – tiger lilies, black eyed Susans, multi-colored zinnias and their bittersweet little cousins, the marigolds. But it was one lone rose bush, small but incredibly beautiful, that sustained me. Its flowers and buds were the most exotic shade of pink. This rose bush was directly outside the window of mother’s room. It was sanctuary.

In other such trying moments I would walk around the nursing home and on one walk, I discovered an entire hillside full of daisies, waving with the long grass in the bright sun of early summer. They looked like waving angels. I sat on the bench alone, the June wind playing about me. Somehow that spot was full of Grace. It uplifted me; it refilled me. It allowed me to return to my dying mother’s room with resolve and peace at heart.

These were kindnesses offered by strangers and the natural world. But what of our family and our friends at such times? Some we discover are lost in their own sorrow. Some call us and write to us and give us language that sustains and uplifts us. Some reach out. Some are silent. We do not forget who did what. We never forget. No one does. Why should we? It is the moment that defines our true relationships with others. It is the proof in the pudding. It is the truth of souls.

Recently a person I respect told me I write about things others don’t talk about. I thought that was perhaps the most perceptive comment about my writing anyone has ever made. Right, I write about stuff people don’t speak about, things people gloss over or just never notice. The dying of our dearest ones and how that feels is a topic we need to think about and write about talk about. I say to my friends and family, bless those of you who did reach out in your own, in any way at all – clumsy or eloquent, with a hug or with a long note or with a card that expresses your feelings. We need to do something is my point. We need to show others we care. We need to step up and be there. And most of all we need to be kind to those who are closest to us because in such travail we sometimes are not.

My father, who lost his 8-year-old daughter, our half-sister, to leukemia in July 1980, said to me that while Shannon was being treated in a St. Louis Children’s Hospital, he often walked the children’s wards and held the hands of dying children. Sometimes he answered their questions about death and suffering. They always wanted to know about dying, he told me. No one talks to them about it.

We need to talk more about dying and about death, and about grief and about healing. We need to talk beyond platitudes. I rarely write in the imperative as I do not consider myself an expert on anything in life. But this experience is so fresh in my heart that I say, talk to people about dying. Talk to those who are the loved ones of those dying. Talk to the dying. Hold a hand. Offer a hug. Just show up and stand there and nod lovingly. Because if you don’t, we will not forget. Because if you don’t, you won’t forgive yourself. It will be a sin of omission so great it may change things forever. Be there. Participate in the journey of those who you love and care for even if it is awkward, uncomfortable, painful. It is our duty to show up and not just in a suit.

And dying isn’t a thing that ends when it is over. There’s a whole journey of grief and recovery for loving survivors. Emily Dickinson lists three steps: “first chill, then stupor, then the letting go.” So if you didn’t call then, call now. If you didn’t reach out then, do so now. Say the words. Say the words. Say the words.