Indifference -- is anything more painful and destructive?

In his book The Surrender and the Singing, Ray Ashford wrote, “I once watched a man murder a beautiful and intelligent woman.  It wasn’t, mind you, a crime of passion in which he took her life with a knife or gun in a single explosive moment of blinding rage.  It was, rather, a crime absolutely devoid of passion, a murder within the law and over a long period of time, four-and-a-half decades.  It was murder by indifference and neglect.”

What a stinging word -- murder by indifference and neglect.  Have you seen it?  I have.  And I have been guilty of it -- not murder, but the smashing of a dream, the choking of an idea, the crushing of enthusiasm, the putting down of a person that made them less than alive and whole -- by my inattention, my failure to listen, by unwillingness to give time, my neglect of caring enough to affirm and encourage.  What about you?  Are you guilty of neglect and indifference?