“People seem much more likely to help when they think you’re about to fall over.” 

My mother doesn’t bat an eyelash as she says this, just takes another bite of the carrot she’s eating and keeps talking. “Falling over” is her Rita-way of saying “kick the bucket” or “bite the dust.” Death and dying are only acknowledged in the cheekiest of terms. No solemnity here. Reminds me of the way Dad told us his cancer was end-stage. “The cancer has been very disobedient, girls” – like it was some mischievous, irrepressible uncle who was back in town.

The medications to treat Mom’s lupus have left her vulnerable to recurrent infections, but amidst it all, she’s cracking up describing to me how the sour-faces of yesterday suddenly become friendly when they think you’re about to die. 

“It’s my money,” she jokes. “They don’t know the will is fixed.”

Mom has at least another two decades to make jokes like this, but her words reverberate like a perfectly tuned Middle C. Because it’s true – we often don’t care as much as we should until we’re guilted into it. Caring slips our mind until our friend calls with news of the diagnosis or the breakup or the job loss.

In some ways this is as it should be. We can’t run through the contact list in our phones on a daily basis and send out a smattering of how are you texts. It would be exhausting and fake, like Dolly Parton level plastic. We each only have two hands and twenty-four hours. 

But still, it shouldn’t take Death’s Door to get us to be kind to each other. To help one another. 

One day in early high school I was swinging at the park, iPod up loud, brain probably somewhere in Vienna, when a boy came up and started swinging next to me. I tried not be annoyed as Chatty Cathy struck up a persistent conversation. He led with, “I’m not going to hit on you,” and I suppressed an eye roll. What a promising opener.

But as we talked, Nathan opened up. He told a sad tale of drug addiction and loss in his family. Depression, anxiety, hopelessness. Fifteen-year-old me was overwhelmed. I listened, occasionally asking questions. We talked for nearly two hours before Mom returned from “picking up milk” at Kroger and honked for me to get in the car. 

I can’t remember if I had a cell phone yet, but I invited Nathan to youth group. We said we’d see each other at the park again. One day soon.

It was years before I heard of him again – senior in high school, drug overdose, dead. I was rocked, the guilt settling inside of me like a stone. I couldn’t remember if I’d ever followed up. Did we talk again after that? If I’d cared more, tried harder, could I have changed things for him?

But that’s not the way things happened, and it’s not really a question for me to ask. We can’t pick up everyone like a pet project and fix their brokenness. That task is for Someone a whole lot bigger and stronger than us. Yeah, we have important roles to play, but the people around us are not 500 count puzzle pieces to be shifted into the right spots. Often we move one piece, just one.  

But the thing I don’t regret – I don’t regret being patient and hearing him out. I don’t regret being kind. It is often asked, “If this was your last day on earth, how would you spend it?” But maybe we should be asking it in reverse – “If this was theirlast day on earth, how would you treat them?” 

We shouldn’t live in fear, peering at our neighbor from the corner of our eye waiting for them to topple in cardiac arrest. But the reality that time is finite should compel us to treat each other better. To live without regret, not just in the choices we make for ourselves, but for the choices we make that impact other people. 

We’ve all loved and lost. We’ve hated and lost. Old classmates who died. Friends who moved away. I don’t want to log in to Facebook one day, get the news, and regret that I was unkind. Regret that I didn’t send a card when I had the chance. 

There may never be a reward for good behavior. No ribbon for friendliest smile or most birthday cards sent. But we do it for other reasons – to move a single puzzle piece. To play our part. And besides, Mom’s right. Treat them right, maybe you’ll end up in the will.