You look good...

I used to see people, who appeared perfectly healthy, park in a handicap spots. "They don't look handicap. They don't look sick," I'd mutter to myself.

Who was I to judge? What does handicap look like? What does illness look like? What does dying look like? It seems I was totally missing a virtue that should have stuck with me through childhood and into adulthood: Don't judge a book by its cover.

I read a couple stories recently about nasty notes left on cars parked in handicap spots. Suzanne Perryman, a mother with a disabled child at a park, and Matt Milstead, a quadriplegic who was playing wheelchair rugby at a YMCA, received snippy notes about how they were clearly not disable or couldn't possibly be disabled. Yet, the authors of the notes failed to see beyond the cover. They assumed. They jumped to conclusions. "I've had people swear at me when they see me leaving a parking lot. Or when I pull in and they walk past me, they roll their eyes," Matt Milstead said.

By the time I was in heart failure and on oxygen 24/7, it was a blessing to have a handicap placard and be able to park closer to facilities. In the brief time I spent as a driver, I was stared at, glared at. Even now I catch people watching my family get out the car... my healthy young husband, and my bouncy daughter. Then my husband comes around the car to help me out. I see their faces turn when they see my oxygen tank.

Most of the time I can make my IV tubing disappear, tucked along my shirt and into a waist pouch. If I didn't have a cannula up my nose, I'd look fairly normal. A little pale, a little disheveled, but somewhat normal. I don't look like I'm dying. But then, what is dying supposed to look like?

I've been told I look good. I know it is supposed to make me feel better but lately I've become more sensitive. A lady I knew of through one of my support groups died recently while waiting for a life-saving organ transplant. And it happened quickly. She was having some difficulties, ended up in the hospital, and in less than two weeks she was dead. Her friends and family were shocked. "How can this happen? She looked good," they exclaimed. They failed to look beyond the cover. They failed to see the frail, brittle pages. Worse yet they spent the last few months unknowingly invalidating the seriousness of her illness with comments such as, "You look good."

She was thirty-something, likable, and her life was turned upside down due some some random illness which was no fault of her own. She was a devoted wife and mother. She was fighting for her life, fighting to stay here for her young son. On the inside her heart and lungs were failing and she was on strong IV medicines and oxygen. She was dying but they said she looked good.

In his book, The Last Lecture, Randy Pausch chronicled his life as he was dying from cancer. He was pulled over for speeding shortly after moving his family to Virginia. When questioning his out of state license and his move, Randy explained that he was dying of cancer and thought his wife and kids should be closer to her family. He just hadn't gotten a new license yet. The policeman said, "You know, for a guy who has only a few months to live, you sure look good."

Randy realized the policeman was trying to figure out if he was telling the truth. "I look great on the outside, but the tumors are on the inside," Randy tried explaining. He then pulled up his shirt to reveal surgical scars to prove his story

Why do we often base our assumptions on how a person looks? Are we judging a book by its cover? I wonder how many Randys, and Matts, and Suzannes are among us.