Just Cured - Experience Fine Foods

I have been near several crises over the last several weeks. A young niece was sent home from sports practice with a note that a doctor needed to look at a severely swollen joint. A man I don’t know at all was told he will die soon; my connection: his wife is the life-long friend of a dear friend. Another friend is in a business dispute threatening her livelihood.

My niece is fine. The eternities between when the orthopedist and the radiologist sent her and her parents to a pediatric oncologist, when the oncologist spoke the word “cancer,” and when my niece and her parents received the test results confirming that the growth is benign were anything but fine. On the day of the first doctor visits, I happened to be visiting their town for a business dinner. I was able to spend a couple of hours with my sister and at least a few minutes with her husband and each of her three children. We didn’t do very much or even talk very much about the unthinkable. Mostly, I tagged along for the late afternoon and early evening activities of a household of teens and an adolescent — readying for, toting to and fetching from sports practices and games — all the while listening to my sister’s plans for an upcoming high school fundraiser. There was no place on earth I would rather have been that evening. As it was, I would have preferred to have begged off the society party and the late dinner at the fancy chain steakhouse with a client in favor of a grade school soccer match and burgers at some dive with my sister and her family.

My dear friend is not fine; neither is her life-long friend. How does one deal with the unequivocal doctor-pronounced death sentence of a loved one? A fortuitously scheduled meeting and a several hour car ride were not in the cards this time; my dear friend and I are separated by hundreds of miles. Are phone calls and emails and my constant thoughts a sufficient substitute for a concerned look, a proffered hand and an unconditionally open ear?

My other friend requires the analytic and negotiating skills that I possess. Her situation is not life-or-death. It is the more frequent (in my professional experience) prospect of financial or professional ruin. Unfortunately, I am the wrong person, in the wrong place, at the wrong time to help her. She, too, is several states separated from me geographically. Shortly after she took her current position, she asked me to represent her company in a minor legal matter. As a result, my ability to help her in a dispute with her employer is severely restricted. I scream to myself that I have assisted literally hundreds of clients resolve similar problems over the years. In my friend’s case, I can only help her find counsel in her locale and act as a silent sounding board to her as this dispute unfolds. I will be able to spend some time with this friend soon — but is that enough?

Tragedy and near tragedy strike millions of people each day. I understand that. Tragedy almost never visits those I love. And when it does, I expect to be able to fight it — or at least be there to help in the fight.