What do I say?
Here’s the situation: I am a member of a writers group. The goal for each member is to publish one day; some already have and some (like me) don’t have finished manuscripts yet. Since this is a “professional” group, I would say we are colleagues more than buddies, friendly more than friends.
This is my second group, having recently fired my first. And I have had an epiphany. They say people look like their dogs, but I’m thinking writers look like their writings. One member, let’s call her Liz, has published fourteen romance and intrigue novels. You would like the way she looks. She is “girly” with perfect curls and a voluptuous body and long dangly earrings. A romance heroine, right? But I digress.
Liz has an adult daughter with cancer. Bad cancer of the here, there and everywhere kind. She’s a very sick woman, half a continent away from her mom; there are understandable circumstances that keep them apart, at least in terms of mileage. I don’t know the daughter, but the mother is going through agony.
Here’s the question: What do I say? We have all faced harrowing circumstances, or some day will. Very few, I am sure, rival the threat to a daughter or son. I think about things said to me when I have felt on the brink, and I realize silence has often mattered the most. “God has a plan,” has never worked for me. But I know that is not true for many.
So, when you have had a co-worker, a colleague, a person you admire in a situation like this, what have you said? Or more important, what has been said to you that has helped, made a difference, soothed?
I will share your comments with Liz. Thanks, my dears, from the top, sides and bottom of my heart (a new phrase I have learned from my friend CB).
