Top 3 Regrets of the Dying (from a hospice worker)

“They’ve said Dad will only last one hour ….”  Apparently I shouted an expletive down the line and threw down the phone. I was serving up lunch to my two very young children as I took the call, not expecting to hear this sort of news, even though I knew he wasn’t far off his final day.  It’s true when they say that when your fight or flight system kicks in your attention becomes laser-focused.  Please don’t let him have any regrets ….

Action stations

I remember flinging down the plates, grabbing my 15-month-old son out of his high chair while telling my 3-year-old daughter to put on the first shoes she could find as we ran out to the car and high tailed it to the hospital.  The journey usually took 25 minutes, we did it in 12.  I called the hospital on the way across to explain my predicament and ask if there was anywhere I could leave the car without having to pay straight away for a car parking ticket.  You can probably guess the answer….

So, with my son in the pushchair and my daughter balancing on the toddler board attached to the back of it we literally sprinted the distance from the car park to my Dad’s hospital bed where my sister and brother in law were sat keeping vigil.  Thankfully Dad lasted a further few hours so we could be with him, hold him, kiss him and say our final goodbyes.

We were lucky

We were lucky.  Most importantly, we were with him while he died and we’d had the chance to say what we needed to in the years, months and weeks approaching his death.  Dad was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 1993 and was given a life-expectancy of approximately 3 years.  He lasted 10.  He was a determined and spirited man and never was his indomitable spirit put to the test as much as during the battle which finally got the better of him in August 2003.

Turning point: no regrets

After he’d died I stayed with him for a good few hours, just chatting to him in the vain hope that he might suddenly re-enter his body and decide to live for a little while longer.  I didn’t want to leave him alone in the hospital, fearing that he might get lonely.  As I felt the warmth gradually slipping away from his body I wondered if he’d had any lingering regrets in life.  It made me commit, there and then, to live my life in such a way as to have as few regrets as possible when my time comes.  If I’m lucky and my children are at my bedside when I make the move across, I truly hope that they’ll be able to say to each other that their Mum had no regrets.

Love for loved ones wins

I volunteer in Hospice where I give complementary therapy treatments to patients and their loved ones.  As well as them receiving a relaxing and therapeutic treatment they often take the opportunity to talk to me about their worries and more often about how much they love their families.

Are you ready?

Death is a great equalizer.  It doesn’t discriminate, it happens to us all.  The thing with death is that you don’t get to pick the date.  All those people who die didn’t plan to be dying when they did.  The question is not if, but when is it going to happen?

Regrets of the dying

No one has ever died saying I wish I’d bought more stuff, I wish I’d watched more tv, I wish I’d spent more time on social media.  In my experience, the people I have spoken to have all said they wished they’d spent more time with their loved ones.  Their faces literally light up when they recall memories of things they have done or experienced with their loved ones.  That deep sense of belonging, that sense of sharing a life alongside someone who you love is the fuel that keeps hope alive.

Top 3 regrets

The top 3 regrets I heard most often were they wished they’d:

• Spent more time with their loved ones and less time tied up with the pressures of work.
• Told their loved ones more often how much they loved them.
• Lived their lives more openly, expressing their feelings more openly and honestly.

Be brave, be open

Sometimes it’s hard, isn’t it to say what you really think.  Opening ourselves up to our raw emotions makes us feel vulnerable and we tend to talk around the subject, often avoiding eye contact as we fall prey to embarrassment or self-consciousness.

Say what you need to

But if not now, when?  When you are open about your feelings towards those you deeply love, nothing can get in your way.  Not even death, because death cannot remove those memories.  Death cannot take away the loving words you shared.  Be brave.  Allow yourself to be openly vulnerable and reach for greater loving heights than you could ever dare hope for.

Your regrets?

What would your regrets be if you died today?  These regrets could all have been changed by making small changes to the choices you make on a daily basis.  If you died today would you be happy about what you’re leaving behind?  If you don’t commit to living your life as the gift you’ve been given, you resign yourself to pure survival.

When my time comes, I don’t want to have regrets. I want my loved ones to know that I lived my life well, that I contributed, that I loved them openly and passionately.  Life is about making memories.  It’s about making good memories with our loved ones.  What memories have you made so far?  What memories can you commit to making from now onwards so that when you leave this mortal coil you can say you have no regrets?

Take action

While you’re still alive be brave and do it because there’s no greater waste of energy than regrets.  Say the things that are as yet unsaid, do the things that are as yet undone.  Act now and make the changes you need to make so that if you die tonight, you will die knowing you did the best you could.  You will die knowing you have no regrets.