Mindy Sterling Quotes

My mother died of lung cancer last year. I felt helpless. As an economist, I thought, 'What can I do?'

In 2008, while the film version of my book 'Choke' was coming to market, my mother was diagnosed with lung cancer. That meant that I had to appear in public to promote a comedy about a son trying to save his dying mother - the plot of Choke - while privately I was caring for my own dying mother. It was torture.

Alzheimer's caregivers are heroes.

Nothing made you feel so useless as another person's grief.

I'm looking out for myself, but I'm looking out for my dad, too.

I thought about dying whenever I got bad news about other people.

It's very shocking, I think, for people caring for the dying to realise how unsaintly they feel, how much anger is mixed up with their grief. In fact, often I think the anger that they feel is a form of grief; it's a kind of raging against what's happening.

It could have been me. And just the hope and prayers that, you know, if, if the shoes were switched, that you know, Laci would do the same thing for me.

When you go through a long illness, certainly one of cancer, there's a certain release from it and relief that it has come to an end, because the suffering can be unbearable, as opposed to an abrupt stop to life when they go out the door and there's a loved one who never comes home because of some accident.

I felt that the best I could do for my father, and the best I could do for myself, and my mother and my family was to stay open to the experience, and learn whatever I could at every step of the way as it was going on.

If you're the person living closest to the parent who's going to need help, and you take on the whole role of primary caregiver, you can be pretty sure your sibling who lives farthest away is going to call you and say, 'You don't know what you're doing.' Because they're not on the spot, and they probably feel guilty.

My mother did not want cancer to interfere with my life, as she knew it would eventually end hers.

You learn how to take care of people from the women in your life.

My mother was a dramatic and egocentric person, and she died before my father, who died of Alzheimer's disease. But I'd often thought, God, we were so lucky that was the order in which they died because she would have felt put upon.

I don't know why Alzheimer's was allowed to steal so much of my father before releasing him into the arms of death. But I know that at his last moment, when he opened his eyes, eyes that had not opened for many, many days, and looked at my mother, he showed us that neither disease nor death can conquer love.

Mum's a worrier, she looked after everybody apart from herself - I think it runs in the family.

My dad was diagnosed with cancer, so we ended up burying him a year to the day that he was diagnosed.

I know I was very unstable and unhappy all through my life. I lost my mother and then my father. Losing Dad was like losing the bearings of my life. My sisters took it badly, but I took it worse. Throughout my lean phases, Dad was like a solid rock, supporting me, whether it was work, or my jail term.

I held the generous, strong, beautiful hand of my first wife Cassie as ovarian cancer took her life much too soon.

I think maybe when you live with someone who is really very ill for a long time, it somehow gives you more of a greedy appetite for life and maybe, yes, you are less measured in your behaviour than you would otherwise be.

No matter what else they're doing, women are also always nurturing.

When my mother died, my father was in a crisis, my sister was in a crisis, everyone was in a crisis. I went round the night my mother was lying in the kitchen, and I organised everything, from the undertaker to the funeral... I looked after everybody, I sorted it all out and I've done so ever since.

Kindness is the cause of all anxiety.

The Kurt thing has burdened me so much.

When you've lost a loved one, you realise how grateful you are for any help in those moments, and any scheme that tries to help families during that terrible time gets my backing.