<em>"Probably everybody be nice to you if they knew you were dying."</em>
<em>"Everybody knows everybody is dying. That is why people are nice. You all die soon enough, so why not be nice to each other."</em>
<strong>-- MARK HARRIS, "Bang the Drum Slowly"</strong>

[caption id="attachment_1483" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Robert De Niro as doomed catcher Bruce Pearson."]<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/DeNiroBangDrumSlowly.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-1483" title="Bang the Drum Slowly (1973)" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/DeNiroBangDrumSlowly-300x174.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="174" /></a>[/caption]

Everybody knows everybody is dying. From the moment we're born, it's an invisible countdown to the end, invisible only because none of us know exactly how many years of life we'll have.

So we do our best to ignore it, taking it seriously only when someone near to us has a serious illness.

Nicole and I have been through several tough illnesses in the nearly 20 years we have been together, and the older we get, the more serious the implications can be. I'm certainly not complaining. I have friends whose health problems are every bit as serious as ours. My friends deal with their problems by continuing to put one foot in front of the other and taking one step at a time.

It's really all you can do, and while people certainly do seem to be nicer to you when they know you are dying, I think most of us are nicer to the people we love when they are simply ill.

My wife said something to me recently that served to make me both happy and sad at the same time. She said that one thing she liked about being ill was that I am so kind to her when she is ill.

I was happy to hear it, but disappointed in myself that it should take an illness to make me be nicer to the person I love  more than anyone else in the world.

It is a step, though, and as health improves, maybe we can hang onto the feeling that made us be nicer in the first place.

After all, everybody knows everybody is dying. That is why people are nice.  We all die soon enough, so why not be nicer

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