Top 5 Regrets of the Dying - Will they be yours?

In My Humble Opinion
1

A palliative nurse wrote a book called “The Top Five Regrets of the Dying” after years of sharing the final days of so many people.

Here’s the question: how many do you think you might end up having, assuming you don’t do anything very differently between now and your end? (I’m crazy lucky to honestly say that I am not now, nor have I ever been in any danger of experiencing any of these issues. I seem to have come into this world hardwired with the right sorts of personality traits to make that so. Of course that makes me wonder what regrets I will have… but it’s my daily job to do my best to make sure the answer will be “none”.)

Here they are:

2

I can see 3 and 4 applying to me, maybe 5, although that’s become better recently.

3

Well now is the time to see and stop it before you find yourself all regretty and sad!

It’s SO incredibly good for one’s mental and emotional health to be express yourself honestly. There’s absolutely nothing to be gained in letting your truth rot you from the inside out.

Almost nothing in the realm of human relationships and interaction really rates the fear we attach to it. If the thing you aren’t expressing includes affection or love for someone, how is it better to not tell them?

(Obviously this isn’t a call for everyone to blurt out everything that ever crosses their minds, that’s foolish and unnecessary, not to mention hurtful.)

4

It would be numbers 4 and 5. Number 4 because I was lazy and number 5 because people depended upon me which I have (had?) no problem with.

“I only wish I had drunk more champagne.”

5

Possibly #4 and 5. My shrink is helping with 5, but 4 has been a lifetime pattern for me that I need to break.

6

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

I didn’t/don’t know what “a life true to myself” is. I only knew/know what others expected of me.

2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.

(shrug)

3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.

When I tried, I was told I was wrong to feel the way I did.

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

It was their choice to not stay in touch with me. I tried. I finally just gave up. It’s simpler this way.

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

I don’t know how, and it doesn’t matter.

7

Probably 4, maybe 2 and 5 as well… although I think I’m fine with 5 at the moment.

8

I would have expected the top regret to be that their life was (almost) over.

9

I don’t really think any of those will apply to me. One of mine is likely to be that I wish I could have back all that time I wasted sitting watching TV.

10

:frowning:

11

My only regret is that I have… Boneitis.
For me, it’s 3 and 4 that I am on track to regretting. I’ve put my career on hold to be there while my son grows up, and I’m not likely to backtrack on that too far, even when I push my career forward. I’m also not exactly the introspective type, so 1 and 5 aren’t going to ping my radar on my deathbed.

12

This frankly sounds like wishful thinking on the part of the nurse. It’s what a woman thinks a man should feel like. A lot of the others are much the same, touchy feely bullshit.

13

:confused: Seriously? It’s your position that this woman just…made it up?

14

I’m all kinds of on board with working less. I have no problem at all with that as a goal, or guiding concept, or whatever. I like my kids. I love being with them. But, oddly, no one seems to want to pay me to sit around and play dolls with them. So while working less sounds nicer than working too much, working too much is definitely nicer than “living homeless and unemployed on the streets with my kids”.

15

Exactly. It’s what she wants people to believe, she thinks it would be a better world if everyone did those things in her list, even if they didn’t say those things, it’s what they really felt. There are any number of reasons someone would rehash a bunch of warmed over new age crap and sell a $10.00 book based on it.

16

Damn. Living in your head must be kinda rough. Not to mention dark. Hope you don’t end up regretting that…:smiley:

17

“I wish I’d spent less time with the palliative nurse.”

18

These sound like regrets that most people usually have even when not dying.

The only difference dying makes is that time has run out. However, unless you’re dying at the age of less than 30, chances are getting more time would not have changed things.

19

I can’t claim to have been a palliative nurse, but I was a trained & certified hospice volunteer. Such as that may be as a reccomendation, you decide if this is valid: imminent death does not automatically bestow clarity and self-awareness on the average person. Until our last gasp, we’re very much who we’ve always been. Me, I don’t see why my deathbed regret won’t be the same as my lifelong one has always been: why did I have to be such a stupid asshole?

20

I strongly suspect that the actual, runaway #1 winner when it comes to top regret of dying people in palliative care is:

“I wish to hell I’d never started smoking.”