I was quite recently a caregiver for someone very close who was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer. (After many terrible months, a remission was achieved.)
This person was not a Buddhist, and not particularly interested in Buddhism. What I did mostly was listen: one of the hardest things for the sufferer is that other people are not willing or able to listen. Exposure to that degree of fear and suffering is very distressing to people who wish to continue to live the inattentive, haphazard lives of normal secular people! Being an infinitely patient listener was the best thing I did.
Unfailing, uncritical love, and irrational optimism about the future were also good tools. would say, “If I am wrong, and the treatments do not work, and I misled you into feeling happy, I promise to refund your misery in full.” I would also say, “I love you and I will not forsake you. As long as you need me I am here.” And I was.
I wasn’t able to sell this person on the Dharma, but I did teach how to do basic breathing meditation. I said, “I want you to have this skill so you don’t have to be at the mercy of fear and pain. You will feel terror, pain, anger, and the rest, but if you can understand them as inconstant and not an essential part of yourself, you can stand outside them. Think your thoughts, don’t let them think you. Don’t believe everything you think.”
I was able to teach some meditation as a way to keep the mind from obsessing on the negative; thinking positively has a quantifiable, demonstrable clinical effect.
And I learned a profound lesson in Samvega. If my friend didn’t ever get the dharma, I did, and the dharma made me a better caregiver than I actually am.
Also, not to put too fine a point on it, I made a vow to Bhaisajyaguru Buddha, that if a remission were achieved, I would devote the rest of my life to the bodhisattva path. Now I don’t in fact believe that deities can be bribed or bullied. It’s probably just a coincidence that things worked out so well . . .