The Amateur's Guide To Death & Dying

March 15, 2016March 13, 2016

The 8 best ways to die – green burial, biodegradable coffins, fertilizer funerals…

Your death. It’s bad for you, but could be worse for the planet. Fear not, though, doomed mortal – from green burial to self-composting, here are eight ways to straighten up and die right

By Alison Maney

You hear it all the time: “Your lifestyle affects the environment.” But do you ever consider how your death will impact the world after you’re gone?

Recently the idea of a green burial took a turn for the practical/macabre, depending on your point of view, with the excitement around the Capsula Mundi death pods – bulbous bodybags inside which your earthly remains can quietly decompose into earthy tree food:

Green burial inside Capsula Mundi burial pods: what sap!

Which is all part of a growing recognition that traditional burials aren’t very eco-friendly. Think about it: we fill a corpse with potentially toxic embalming liquid (formaldehyde, a chemical commonly used in embalming fluid, is sometimes classified as a carcinogen), put it in a mahogany box that’s been transported and harvested from the tropics, and allow nothing but grass to grow over the burial site for hundreds of years.

Or you opt for cremation, which is arguably worse – burning a body necessitates massive amounts of gas and electricity (about the same amount you would normally use in a month, according to some figures) and releases greenhouse gases and mercury (!) into the air.

“If you assumed your late Aunt Bertha could no longer expand her carbon footprint, you’re sadly mistaken”

Yes, if you assumed your late Aunt Bertha could no longer expand her carbon footprint, you’re sadly mistaken – the deceased continue to have an environmental impact beyond the grave.

But do not despair, environmentally conscious future-corpses. You’re not doomed to an afterlife of eco-unfriendliness. If you’re dead serious about turning your ultimate demise into your ultimate act of kindness, then read on, because we’ve put together a plethora of green burial options and eco-positive posthumous possibilities for you to peruse.

1. Freeze-dry your remains

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” the saying goes. But what kind of dust? How about millimetre-sized freeze-dried particles? The process of promession, developed in 1997 by biologist Susanne Wiigh-Mäsak, does just that. The process is surprisingly gentle: your corpse is frozen at -18° C (0.4° F) and placed in a vat of liquid nitrogen. Slight vibrations break up the body and a vacuum chamber evaporates the liquid, transforming your earthly remains into a dry powder. A bit less traumatic than having your body incinerated, no?

Why is this so good for the environment? Unlike cremation, the process doesn’t release harmful gas into the air and helps break the body down more quickly once it’s buried (usually in a corn starch coffin, set in a shallow grave). After 6 to 12 months, the body and its coffin will have completely composted into the soil, creating fertile ground for new life. Aw!

2. From grief to reef – rebuild coral with your corpse

If you really want to be cremated, you can still do some good with your dust. Consider resting in a watery grave while helping the rebuilding of coral reefs and the creation of habitats for fast-dwindling marine life. Eternal Reefs will mix your ashes into environmentally safe concrete that will be used to create a Reef Ball, a porous, pod-like structure specifically designed to mimic a natural reef and provide a habitat for microorganisms, animals and plants.

An alternative to your more traditional urn, Reef Balls can be adorned with a small plaque and marked with handprints and messages from your loved ones, before being dropped into the sea. Family members and friends can boat out to your final resting place for a memorial ceremony. Gives the term ‘life after death’ a whole new meaning, doesn’t it?

3. Literally become a tree

Another option if you feel you simply must be cremated? Become a tree. The Bios Urn is essentially a cone that contains soil, your ashes and a tree seed of your choosing. The urn itself is biodegradable, so you just plant the whole shebang in the ground and watch a sapling spring from what used to be your grandfather. It’s a touching way to keep the dearly departed in the family (unless there’s a termite infestation – sorry, grandpa) and helps combat the world’s abysmal deforestation statistics – up to 58 thousand square miles of forest per year.

So, what kind of tree do you want to be? The website offers maple, pine, ginkgo, beech and ash seeds, plus the option to contribute your own preferred seed if none of those tickle your branches.

4. Use a biodegradable coffin

When it comes to biodegradable coffins, the ultimate in green burial funeral accessories, you have plenty of choices. Fancy a colourful, personalised cardboard coffin that’s free of metal fixings and made from recycled materials? You got it. Prefer something earthy, pretty and endearingly similar to a picnic hamper, like a wicker coffin? No problem. How about a coffin made out of cotton and banana leaves? Done.

Unlike mahogany coffins, biodegradable coffins are usually built locally and aren’t treated or covered in lacquer. That cuts down on emissions used to transport the coffins and the time it takes for the coffin to disintegrate once in the ground.

Even better news? Biodegradable coffins tend to be cheaper than their more traditional tropical hardwood counterparts. With funerals typically costing around £3,700 (around $5,277) in the UK and over $7,000 (£4,909) in the US, your surviving family members will definitely thank you.

5. Get embalmed with essential oils

Sure, formaldehyde is great for preserving your flesh (or shark flesh if you’re Damian Hirst) so that you look your best at your funeral, but this popular embalming ingredient is also a toxic chemical and – surprisingly enough – is therefore rife with problems. It’s linked to cancer and has also recently been linked to ALS (a neurodegenerative disease), putting embalmers at risk. And although there haven’t been any conclusive studies measuring the environmental impact of embalming liquid (and, in all fairness, the compound typically breaks down quickly in the soil), some people have argued that the liquid could somehow make its way into our drinking water.

Instead of risking the life of your future funeral director, or the plant and animal life that will live in and around your grave, why not get yourself embalmed with non-toxic essential oils? Biodegradable embalming alternatives still disinfect, deodorize and preserve – though perhaps not for as long. Still, the sooner your body starts helping nourish new life in the soil the better, right?

6. Have a woodland burial

Woodland burials, also known as natural or green burials, have surged in popularity over the past few years. And why wouldn’t they? Traditional cemeteries are sad and macabre, not to mention covered in herbicides and manicured regularly with petrol lawnmowers. Instead, why not let local plant and animal life flourish around your former earthly vessel? Sounds like a much cheerier way to spend the afterlife.

A word to the wise: natural burial grounds can vary widely. Some are very strict about what you can put in the ground – no embalmed bodies, no stone memorials, no non-biodegradable coffins – while others are less stringent. Some plant a tree over the grave, while others place a wooden plaque (or both). Some are commercial enterprises, while others are non-profit charities.

Though they’re called ‘woodland burials,’ you can find natural burial sites in fields, meadows, woodlands and parks. Some are even adjacent to more traditional cemeteries. Whatever you like, really. But whatever you choose, you’re helping to preserve a green space by using it as your final resting place – after all, no-one wants to build condos over a burial ground.

These types of burials are also usually cheaper than buying a plot in a traditional graveyard. Again, your descendants will thank you.

7. Donate your body to science

Have you ever dreamed of helping to find a cure for cancer? Well, that dream doesn’t need to die just because you did. If you donate your body to medical science, you’ll help train future doctors or help scientists perform biomedical research. If you’re nervous about how young doctors will treat your former vessel, never fear – when it comes to human dissection, medicinal ethics generally dictate that medical students must treat your body with dignity. Well, as much dignity as you can grant a body while you’re slicing it open and peeking at its insides.

But be warned – if you’re an organ donor and one or more of your organs are removed post-mortem, most medical schools won’t take your cadaver (yep, that’s your corpse). This is an all-or-nothing sort of deal.

8. Compost yourself

This option isn’t available yet, but it might be by the time you meet your maker. Architect Katrina Spade’s Urban Death Project is essentially a dignified way to turn your remains into nutritive compost as quickly as possible.

Spade envisions a three-storey composting column, primed with high-carbon materials and microbes, surrounded by a wide winding ramp. Your family personally wraps your body in a shroud and walks it up to the top of the column, where they say goodbye. Then you’re gently placed in the composting facility, and before you know it, boom – you’re soil.

Of course, you can’t have your body embalmed – quick decomposition is kind of the point here – but the project will happily refrigerate your physical form until the ceremony takes place. If that sounds like your kind of thing, you can even donate to the Urban Death Project.

Complete Article HERE!

March 14, 2016March 12, 2016

Brené Brown on Empathy

What is the best way to ease someone’s pain and suffering? In this beautifully animated RSA Short, Dr Brené Brown reminds us that we can only create a genuine empathic connection if we are brave enough to really get in touch with our own fragilities.

March 13, 2016March 12, 2016

A daring exhibit asks dying people: How do we make the most of living?

By Bob Tedeschi

Claudia Biçen, an artist based in San Francisco and London, spent the past two years interviewing and sketching hospice patients. She was convinced, she said, that dying people could help answer the question of how to live.

The result is a new multimedia exhibit, “Thoughts in Passing,” featuring nine sketched portraits and brief audio narratives in which the patients reflect not only on what it’s like to be dying, but on the lives they led.

The exhibit, completed in recent weeks and which will be shown in San Francisco, has already generated a passionate response. It is likely to be shown in other cities, and can also be seen online.

“Doing this felt like shining a light into this very dark, scary area for me and I’m sure for lots of people,” Biçen said in an interview. “It’s made me feel in my life more. I’m more in each moment.”

Born 30 years ago in London to a mother who brought home orphaned kittens and puppies for foster care, Biçen often held the animals as they died, and she grew accustomed to “the idea of death being close by.”

She earned degrees in psychology, philosophy, and anthropology before romance brought her to San Francisco, where she sketched portraits of family members. The work earned the attention of local galleries, but failed to deliver lasting satisfaction. Deeper wisdom, she thought, might be found in subjects facing death.

Biçen asked Bay Area hospices to find patients to sit for portraits and reflect on life and death, and in 2014 the first candidates emerged. She met several times with each, posing the question: What does it feel like to be dying? They had never been asked the question, they told her, and they had much to say.

She retreated to a studio, where she surrounded herself with photographs of her subjects and audio recordings from their meetings. Just 400 words would make the final audio cut. In the portraits, she would embed words taken from fragments of their conversations.

One subject, Jenny, is an artist herself. Written on her blouse are allusions to time spent locked in a mental institution with the criminally insane. In her audio recording, she tells of a childhood of being kept in an attic by foster parents, the terror of shock therapy, her later discovery of art, and the peace she found in it.

“I wonder about people who never ever know high peace,” Jenny says. “And I felt lucky that I knew. Little old nobody me could get high peace.”

Biçen’s pencil sketch of Jenny will hang in the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery starting March 12 — a significant achievement for an artistic project, but one that doesn’t in itself speak to Biçen’s more spiritual achievements.

Experiencing her exhibit, even online, is like stumbling onto an exquisite, futuristic cemetery: portraits that capture the subjects’ essence; spoken words that distill their feelings on life and death; written words that hint at experiences that shaped them.

On screen, the portraits fade to black before their voices go silent, leaving viewers to confront their own reflection on the screen as patients offer their final thoughts.

The exhibit begs the question: How will you be when the time comes?

Complete Article HERE!

March 12, 2016March 11, 2016

The Rules of Grief Are for Other People

by Shawn Doyle

How to navigate grief in a society that doesn’t really understand.

A few years ago I was getting my hair cut, and the woman cutting my hair asked if I was married. I told her I was and I was a newlywed. She kind of looked at me funny because people don’t expect someone fifty plus years old to be a newlywed. (Why? I guess there are some rules that only young people are newlyweds, I guess.) She asked if I was married before and I gently told her I was a widower. She asked about how long I had waited before I started dating again, and when I told her she was quite shocked. She them muttered to me in a quiet way, “I could never do that.” When I asked “Could never do what?” she said “Any of it.” It became clear she did not want to discuss it further. Somehow I had broken some rule in her values system. This reminded me of what I wrote about in my book The Sun Still Rises about the “rules” about grief.

I wanted to share with you society’s rules about grief, and what you can do to navigate around them. Yes, I know you already have enough stress and pressure dealing with grief, and now you have to deal with other people’s perceptions of what the rules are relating to grief. Why in our society are there very preconceived notions about the rules? My guess is that people are ill-informed about death, and are passing along what they have heard during their life as the rules. The reality is there are none.

Rule #1- There are rules. Somehow our society made determinations about exactly how a grieving person should conduct themselves at all times. If we expected other people to live by our pre-defined rules they would actually resent it. Yet for some strange reason it seems perfectly OK to tell a grieving person how to live. Hmm… One of the things that I find fascinating is that people often don’t realize they are dictating the rules—they’re just blindly following social “norms”.

The problem is—what is normal? Your loved one dying was not normal. Your loved one passing away tragically was not normal. Your loved one dying too young was not normal. Your loved one dying before her parents was not normal. Your loved one being killed in a tragic accident was not normal. So my point is that none of this is truly normal. It’s all well—just weird, and sometimes very surreal, like we are caught in a real-life nightmare. So I don’t know why people are trying to dictate norms for something that’s not normal! Rule breaker solution: So my suggestion for you about the rules is to ignore them all, except for rules that make sense to you and feel right. Don’t let other people dictate your life to you.

Rule #2- You must act in a certain way. I don’t know what way you’re supposed to act, but one of the things that I found fascinating (OK I admit, I’m a geek about studying human nature) was during the early days of my grief people were constantly watching how I grieved. Oh sure, I know people were worried and concerned about me which I very much appreciated. But some people said things to me that indicated they were carefully watching how I was grieving. Several people said something like “you seem to be doing really well.” Indicating they were almost surprised at how well I was doing. The mistake in their perception was they were only looking at how I was reacting on the outside—not at my internal emotions.I wish people would stop clinging to the stereotype of what a griever looks like and acts like. Rule breaker solution: So my advice to you on this rule is to simply be yourself and don’t worry about how you were supposed to or not supposed to act. If people want to misinterpret your actions as being inappropriate then that is their problem. This is you and your family’s time—not theirs.

Rule #3- Certain activities are not appropriate for someone who is grieving. Our society seems to have determined that certain activities are not appropriate for someone who is grieving. Now please don’t misunderstand what I’m saying. I’m not saying this idea applies to going to a party three days after losing a loved one. But what I am saying is people certainly judge what activities grieving people should or should not do, and also when they should do them. Often after my wife passed away I felt as if I was being confined in the house just sitting around staring at the four walls. After a good deal of thought and reflection I realized it was not good for me to stay stagnant. So I started going out to the mall to shop and going to art galleries to look at art and going to amusement parks. All of these activities were done yes—by myself. Often my cell phone would ring and the person on the other end would ask me what I was doing. I would tell them that I was shopping, or at an amusement park, or having dinner and getting ready to go to the movies.

There is even an implication at times that a person who is grieving and engaging in some activity is somehow being disrespectful to the loved one who has gone. This could not be further from the truth and I find it to be offensive. Rule breaker solution: Ignore them. It’s their problem not yours. The bottom line is that it is up to you to decide at this point what is best for you. Listen to your heart and your instinct and it will tell you what feels right and what doesn’t. Unfortunately, friends, family, and acquaintances don’t necessarily know what’s best for you—just what would be “normal” under the circumstances.

Rule #4- There is a right time to wait before dating. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Nothing is more ridiculous than that statement. As I discussed in an earlier chapter I decided to start dating about four months after my wife passed away. Please don’t pay too much attention to the four months. In my opinion it doesn’t matter whether it was four months or four years. There is no right answer because the answer is different for every single person.

I am a very loving person. I am and have always been a people person. As a result of my loss I felt extremely, devastatingly lonely, walking around an empty house without a loved one. Due to the guidance of my best friend and advice from other valued friends and family I decided when the right time was for me. I have had many friends and family members tell me stories of people from their church or from their neighborhood who have lost a loved one and have been remarried within one year. They then tell me how scandalized everyone was that this person moved so quickly to “replace” their husband or their wife. Rule breaker solution: So my advice on this rule is for you to determine what is right for you. No one else on the planet can tell you how you feel in your heart and your mind about the possibility of dating after you’ve lost a husband, wife girlfriend, or boyfriend. They can’t see inside of your heart, they can’t peer into your soul and know what you feel and believe. They can only go by what you tell them.

Rule breaker solution: Go out into the world of dating and seek joy and love. I also believe that finding joy and love and companionship will help you heal more quickly in the grieving process. Once you start dating—then people will also have preconceived notions about what you should and should not be doing. They will say you’re dating too soon, you are not dating soon enough, you’re dating too many people, and not enough people. Again, all of these decisions are up to you.

Rule #5- They have to give you permission. I felt in many cases as people were talking to me during the early days of my grief process that they were actually giving me permission. They would say things like “when you’re ready to start dating we will support you.” As if at 54 years old I needed permission to start dating. The reality is no one has to give you permission to do anything. If you have lost a loved one—what you do regarding your social life is completely up to you. You don’t need permission. Rule breaker solution) You don’t need to offer any more explanation about what you are doing, because you don’t have to get their permission because you are an adult.

Rule #6- There are certain things you have to do. My wife passed away in May and that following November my family in Virginia invited me to come for Thanksgiving. For lots of reasons I did not feel like going to Virginia and I did not feel like celebrating Thanksgiving. I wanted to stay home, I wanted some alone time to think and to work on the house. So I politely declined. When you’re grieving it is perfectly OK to choose whether or not to attend holiday functions. It’s OK to go to family get-togethers or not go to family get-togethers. At Christmas I did go to Virginia to celebrate with my family. Rule breaker solution: So aside from taxes and your job responsibilities, just remember that you don’t have to do anything—particularly when you are grieving. This is, in my opinion, the one time to stop worrying about other people’s feelings. It’s more important to take care of your own feelings during this difficult time.

Rule #7- You should or should not cry. This is by far the most misunderstood element in my opinion about grief. And there are so many odd rules that people have about crying. People, for example, think you should cry a lot in the early days of your grief and maybe not cry at all later into your grief. These are all just such ridiculous concepts it amazes me that we have to even address them, but we do. Crying is extremely therapeutic for releasing the pressure and stress of grief. I have noticed many times after a good, long cry that I felt much better and felt relieved.

The other thing that’s interesting about crying is a lot of people don’t know how to handle a person who is crying. Particularly when they don’t expect it or it seems out of place. I have found in my grief process that I often would start crying when I expected it least. There would be a song that was playing on the radio, a scene in a movie or a TV show, and for some reason something that I heard or saw flipped the trigger that made me cry. I was fortunate that most times I cried, I was not in public. Rule breaker solution: I want you to give yourself permission to cry in public if it happens—and to not be embarrassed about crying. There is no reason to be embarrassed. It is a normal human function to cry when we are sad or when we are moved in some way. The only reason why crying may sometimes be embarrassing is because of people’s awkward reactions to the fact that you’re crying. For men who cry (even though I believe this is gradually changing in our society) there is an additional stigma attached to crying. Some men are raised with the philosophy that “boys don’t cry” and crying is a sign of weakness and or emotional vulnerability. Crying is not a sign of weakness and it certainly is a sign of vulnerability, but if you’re grieving you’re vulnerable—there is nothing wrong with that.

Rule #8- There is a time frame for grief and it’s officially one year. I have heard people talk about someone who is grieving, and say that they have been grieving for ten years and still cry every day. Is that wrong? It’s not up to me to say; everyone grieves in a different time frame. On the other hand I’ve had people who have insinuated that I was not spending enough time on my grief, and suggested that I was maybe moving forward a little too quickly. Now they did not say it in those words, but they insinuated or hinted around about it. I got the message loud and clear. There is no time frame for grief, and there is no time frame for getting over it because you don’t get over it. You learn to accept it, but only because you don’t have a choice. I will say that if someone is struggling after a great deal of time, and are having difficulty just in managing their life because they are crying and massively depressed then they may want to seek help in the form of a grief counseling group or individual counseling with a mental health professional.

Grief is not like a highway on a roadmap. I can’t look at the map and tell someone “OK, this map is 100 miles and based on your average speed you’ll complete the journey within 12 months.” There is no road, there is no map, and there has been a wreck, so no one can say how long the journey is going to take. The other question is what do we mean by a timeframe for grief? That would mean that at some point the grief is totally and completely over, for us never to have another sad feeling again about the loss of a loved one. That, of course, is an absurd concept and will never happen. I find that even though I have healed very nicely in 22 months, there are still days where I see something or hear something or read something, and it makes me sad, because it reminds me yet again of my tragic loss. Rule breaker solution: Take your time—it’s all up to you.

Complete Article HERE!

March 11, 2016March 11, 2016

A Physical Place to Mourn a Virtual Friendship

Our memories took place over social media and business travel. So it was complicated when he died, but my daily routine didn’t change.

By Christina Wallace

The thought struck me as I hopped in a cab to LaGuardia: I have a long layover at ORD; I should call Adam and meet up for coffee.

This was a common thought in our friendship, which began on Twitter and was sustained by emails, meandering phone calls, and spontaneous IRL meet ups whenever one of us found ourselves in the other’s city. But this time was different: Adam died two weeks ago. The realization smacked me harder than the February wind, and I found myself struggling to breathe in the back of the taxi.

It is always crushing to lose a friend. Even more so when it is sudden and completely unexpected. How does a completely healthy man in his 20s just not wake up one morning?

But what do you do when the familiar haunts of your friendship are not shared neighborhoods or favorite coffee shops, but social media platforms and overlapping business travel? When time with Adam is short hand for Medium posts and ORD.

Adam first found me on Twitter four years ago. He was a consultant at BCG and I had recently left the company to found my own tech startup. He followed me, tweeted hi, and then wrote a blog post with a huge shout out for my startup. So when he came to New York City later that month and asked to grab coffee, of course I said yes. We talked for more than two hours. The next day I got a package from Amazon for giving him my time, Adam sent me a copy of, a book considered by many founders to be the startup bible. I called him immediately and told him it was the first time in the dozens of the coffee chats I had done that I got more out of the conversation than I gave. (I neglected to tell him I already had two copies of the book.)

Adam gave to everyone in his life. So it was always a pleasure when I could give in return. Whether offering career advice on leaving BCG to move into venture capital, providing feedback on an early draft of a blog post, or making introductions to people I thought he’d love, it always felt like a gift rather than a favor.

We had a few mutual friends, but mostly our relationship was online. So when Adam died suddenly and I couldn’t make it to Chicago for the funeral I found myself at a loss for how to mourn. Technically nothing had changed in my day-to-day life.

On Twitter, I fell down the Internet rabbit hole of seeing of Adam. I liked, retweeted and engaged with complete strangers who were part of his life. It was like attending a 21 century Twitter shiva with casserole in hand, listening as strangers shared stories from college or summer camp.

I realized that in four years of friendship we never took a picture together. I yearned to see his face. His Facebook photo albums did not disappoint, though I noted with some sadness that he had been in NYC just three weeks prior for a wedding, while I’d been at a conference in Charleston. I recalled promises we’d made to meet up next time.

So on this Chicago layover I decided we should have our usual coffee chat, updated to our new circumstances: I’d swing by his grave with some coffee (for me) and flowers (for him).<

I was surprised to find the cemetery was close to O’Hare both because it was incredibly convenient for me but also because I suspect his permanent location near a major airport hub would have delighted him. Upon landing I bought roses from the kiosk at baggage claim and a latte from the airport Starbucks. My driver was annoyed the destination was so close, but I promised him return fare and a generous tip.

When I arrived, it was 4:32 and the cemetery’s gates had been locked at 4:30. Undeterred, I convinced the cabbie to drive around the perimeter until we found an opening in the fence that I could hop over with flowers, coffee, and a cast on one arm. I had to sweet talk a guard who flagged me down. He gave me ten minutes before I had to scram.

By the time I located Adam’s freshly dug grave I was flat out laughing. I’d spilled coffee all over myself and the shenanigans required in order to see him seemed perfectly apropos. The sun was setting quickly.

I told him how I ended up with a cast on one arm and that I was bummed he couldn’t be on my new podcast. I told him about my mission to get computer science into middle school science classrooms and how I was elated to make Gold status on United, which would keep me flying through Chicago for another year.

And then our time was up.

I left him the flowers and promised a longer coffee chat next time I flew through ORD. Heading back to O’Hare I realized my sixth favorite airport for layovers had become a place I looked forward to visiting providing a physical space to honor my online friendship.

Complete Article HERE!

March 10, 2016March 10, 2016

Dying 101

Here are a few tips on how to prepare for death.

Thank you The Clairity Project!

March 9, 2016March 8, 2016

The Top Five Regrets of Dying People

By Bronnie Ware

A nurse in end-of-life care shares the most common regrets of the dying

When you are on your deathbed, what others think of you is a long way from your mind.

For many years I worked in palliative care. My patients were those who had gone home to die. Some incredibly special times were shared. I was with them for the last three to twelve weeks of their lives.

People grow a lot when they are faced with their own mortality. I learned to never to underestimate someone’s capacity for growth. Some changes were phenomenal. Each experienced a variety of emotions, as expected, denial, fear, anger, remorse, more denial and eventually acceptance. Every single patient found their peace before they departed though, every one of them.

regrets-dying_hands — People grow a lot when they are faced with their own mortality

When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently, common themes surfaced again and again. Here are the most common five:

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

This was the most common regret of all. When people realize that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honoured even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made.

It is very important to try and honour at least some of your dreams along the way. From the moment that you lose your health, it is too late. Health brings a freedom very few realize, until they no longer have it.

2. I wish I didn’t work so hard.

This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their children’s youth and their partner’s companionship. Women also spoke of this regret. But as most were from an older generation, many of the female patients had not been breadwinners. All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence.

By simplifying your lifestyle and making conscious choices along the way, it is possible to not need the income that you think you do. And by creating more space in your life, you become happier and more open to new opportunities, ones more suited to your new lifestyle.

regrets-dying_i-love-you — We often regret the things we didn’t say

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

Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result.

We cannot control the reactions of others. However, although people may initially react when you change the way you are by speaking honestly, in the end it raises the relationship to a whole new and healthier level. Either that or it releases the unhealthy relationship from your life. Either way, you win.

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

Often they would not truly realize the full benefits of old friends until their dying weeks and it was not always possible to track them down. Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years. There were many deep regrets about not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying.

It is common for anyone in a busy lifestyle to let friendships slip. But when you are faced with your approaching death, the physical details of life fall away. People do want to get their financial affairs in order if possible. But it is not money or status that holds the true importance for them. They want to get things in order more for the benefit of those they love. Usually though, they are too ill and weary to ever manage this task. It all comes down to love and relationships in the end. That is all that remains in the final weeks, love and relationships.

Many don’t realize til the end that happiness is a choice

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

This is a surprisingly common one. Many did not realise until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called ‘comfort’ of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to their selves, that they were content. When deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again.

When you are on your deathbed, what others think of you is a long way from your mind. How wonderful to be able to let go and smile again, long before you are dying.

Life is a choice. It is YOUR life. Choose consciously, choose wisely, choose honestly. Choose happiness.

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