Death Meditations: Saying Goodbye

Famous Last Words are preposterous. I seriously doubt, for example, that John Barrymore actually said,

“Die? I should say not, dear fellow. No Barrymore would allow such a conventional thing to happen to him.”

and then died. I don’t believe it.

As a hospice volunteer, I have been at the bedside of many dying people and I can’t think of any one who had much of anything to say at the end. Dying people don’t tend to talk much.

Still, the idea of deathbed statements or reconciliations is still around. My advice is don’t wait. Here are three reasons why:

1. It is highly likely that your level of physical and neurological functioning will not support serious thinking or talking
2. You don’t know when you are going to die or how sudden and unexpected it might be, so you could easily miss your big chance.
3. If you say it, if you take the step toward reconciliation, if you do whatever it is you need to do now instead of waiting any longer, you will feel better and wonder why you waited this long.

I see the act of Saying Goodbye as part of preparing for end of life and, like Famous Last Words, I see the time to do it as Now.