The educator Parker Palmer, in his book, Listening to Your Life Speak, offers a tale of his healing from depression. He relays his experience with his many friends and family and the health care providers who gave him much advice, guidance, therapy and medication. The message he received, “we care about you, now get well.” One friend, however, offered nothing but his presence. He asked Parker if he could visit weekly and simply massage his feet. Their encounters were mostly silent. His friend asked nothing about his recovery — he simply offered himself. Parker Palmer went on to recover from his depression and continues to live a very full life. He counts these weekly visits as singularly meaningful in his recovery.

This story is a beautiful reminder that very often what is needed by those who are suffering is the unconditional presence of others. Often our care and concern is offered in a unspoken barter arrangement — I’ll visit and help as long as you continue to follow advice, “do what you’re told” and get better. If the ill or infirmed don’t hold up their end, we often, in our discouragement, disappointment, or anger, retreat and withdraw.

Surely there are times when we need to address, even confront, passivity on the part of others in order to aid their recovery, but the underlying message of “you alone can do it” is most effective if it is accompanied by “but you won’t have to do it alone.”

Advocacy, caring advice and information can be helpful, even crucial, during times of illness especially in an increasingly fragmented and stingy health care system. But as important as active support is the simple and often silent message of being with the ill. One of the greatest hardships of illness, the one that can seem most unbearable, is the fear of being abandoned. It is a universal fear and one that we all face. Offering honest reassurance, whether spoken or not, that “you will not be abandoned” helps mitigate that fear and can provide the energy and motivation that aids recovery.

There are very real pressures of time and money that accompany illness. Those pressures can rush us to intervention rather than to reflection. Being aware of one’s own motivation and goals doesn’t have to take an enormous amount of time, but it does take thoughtful consideration. It requires that we actively and honestly “check in” with the ill person to ensure that their wants, needs and goals are paramount. In the search for solutions, it’s easy to miss the forest for the trees.  It requires flexibility and openness — a true partnership with the ill. It requires an honesty about oneself : “this is what I am observing”, “this is what I am thinking”, “this is what I want” and honest encounters in which we listen to what is on the mind and in the heart of the other.

Finally, it requires an ability to accept that our choices and hopes for an ill relative may not be theirs. It doesn’t mean that he/she is “non-compliant” or “unrealistic”. It may simply mean their way and perhaps their timetable is different.

Healing takes on many forms and doesn’t always result in a cure or recovery from illness. Life can’t always promise a cure. But healing is always possible when care is given without condition but simply with a willingness to “watch over.”