Regrets at the End of Life
As the end of life nears, it’s not uncommon for people to review their lives and weigh them in the balance. During this self-reflection, people often find that they have common types of regrets.
Before funerals at funeral homes in Wirtz, VA, as people face their own mortality, whether as the inevitable result of aging or because of a terminal illness, they often become introspective about their lives and they take a full measure of their years on this planet.
It is not uncommon for these people to have the same types of regrets about their lives, and it is from their experiences that we can learn and, hopefully, not have the same kinds of regrets when we come to the end of the road in our own lives.
One regret that many people express before they die is that they wished they had spent more time with their loved ones. We can often get so busy being busy that we tend to take our loved ones for granted and assume they’ll always be there when we finally get some time to spend with them.
But people die while we’re busy, they leave while we’re busy, and they get too busy for us when we finally have the time to spend with them. The Company Man, an essay by renowned columnist Ellen Goodman, and The Cat’s in the Cradle, by musician Harry Chapin poignantly talk about this common regret.
Another regret that is common at the end of life is that people wished they hadn’t spent so much time worrying about things. Worry is the anticipation of the unknown, and it usually takes us to the very worst possible outcomes, which in reality never happen. So, we can find ourselves in a constant state of fretting about things that don’t exist, and they can steal time from us actually living our lives in the moment.
Forgiveness is something that is commonly on the mind of people who are approaching the end of their lives. Not only are they seeking forgiveness from others for the wrongs they’ve done, but they also find that that they did not forgive other people often enough. Some people get upset at people – friends, family, and acquaintances – for both little and big things during their lives, and they develop grudges and refuse to forgive whatever happened.
Families can be ripped apart, longtime friendships can be destroyed, and peaceful relationships with acquaintances can be turned in relationships of anger and avoidance. Reflection at the end can show that forgiveness would have prevented all of these.
A regret that may be surprising among people who are nearing death is the fact that they were not more honest, authenticate, and genuine. We all have a capacity to present an image of ourselves that is not altogether true. We can see this in living color on social media platforms where people present themselves and their lives one way, but anyone who knows them well knows it’s not a truthful representation.
We all also tend to be less than truthful in more places in our lives than we may realize. Our dishonesty may be because we fear getting into trouble, we don’t want to hurt someone else (even though lying hurts, in the end, more than honesty), or we want something that shouldn’t be ours or we want to knock someone else out of our way to something we want.
For information on regrets and funerals at funeral homes in Wirtz, VA, our compassionate and experienced staff at Conner-Bowman Funeral Home & Crematory is here to help if you need personalization services. You can come by our location at 62 Virginia Market Place Dr., Rocky Mount, VA, 24151 or you can contact us today at (540) 334-5151.
