Transcript of The Most Common Regrets People Have When They’re Dying | Mel Robbins Clips

In your experience, what are the biggest regrets that people have on their deathbed?

They're mostly around how they spent their time, how they lived, about being authentic. I wish I lived a life for me, not for my parents or society or my partner or my kids, but what was most authentic for me. People also often regret how they spent their time, you know, spending more of it at the office or not playing pickleball or not doing the things that they really wanna do with their time. I also find that people regret how they showed up for the people that they loved. Mhmm.

Or didn't show up for the people that they loved.

Probably more.

Far more how they didn't show up. Not saying they're I love yous and thank yous or please forgive me. That's a big 1.

That's something that I think a lot about that it's only when it's over that people that some people find the ability to forgive or to ask for forgiveness. And for somebody that's listening to us right now, could you speak directly to them about what's available today based on the reality of death and what to do today in order to not die with regrets?

There are 3 big questions that I suggest people ask themselves when thinking about their lives and their relationship and their death, which is who did I love, how did I love, and was I loved? Now these questions, I speak of them in the past tense because I'm thinking about somebody who's on their deathbed, but those questions are available for us right now and should be available to us right now. I don't say should very often, but this is 1 where it's wildly, wildly important for us to think about how we relate to 1 another and what's still what's still sticky between us. Too often, I see people at the deathbed where they're wishing for that, you know, magic moment where that person that they've been loving from afar because they did something or the other person did something, they're waiting for that to be reconciled, and it just isn't. Can I tell you a story?

Yes, please.

There's a client a few years ago who was in her late eighties. She was a grandma and her 1 of her grandkids was there. She'd had 3 biological children, 9 grandchildren, and only 1 was there. This 1 grandchild had been busting her butt to make so much money to put grandma in 1 of these homes where there was maybe, like, 6 people in a room. You know what I mean?

It was not fancy or top of the line, but this kid had worked really hard for it. Turns out grandma was a terrible parent. Her kids didn't wanna be there. They'd made their peace, but grandma insisted that she did not want to die until those kids came to say goodbye to her. And I talked to all those kids, and they were all done.

They'd made their peace with her dying. We eked out a letter. And when I say eek, I mean, she was practically nonverbal at this time, but there were things that she still wanted to say. So we tried really hard to get all these things out. Some of them were asking for forgiveness, but also some of them were staunchly, I did what I need to do and how I need to do it, and you kids should be grateful.

And she moved into active dying a very short while later. I don't know what happened with those letters. I don't know if those kids got them. I don't know what they thought of them, but I know that they did what they need to do for themselves. Sometimes we don't have to forgive just because somebody is dying.

We need to speak the truth about how we feel about people while they're living. And if grandma maybe had tried that earlier, she may have been in a different position when she was dying.

Wow. Well, I have a very good friend who's been estranged from her parents for a number of years, and her father just died.

How's she feeling?

I don't know how she's feeling today, but I can only imagine that her feelings are all over the place. And mourning someone that you have been estranged from for a long time must just it doesn't it doesn't prevent you for like, you still grieve somebody even if you haven't seen them for a long time, even if you ended on bad terms. And so I don't know how she's doing today, but as soon as I heard the news, I told her that if you want to go to the funeral, I will get on a plane with you. I will go. If you do not wanna go to the funeral, that is okay too.

I will I will come and support you if you want somebody to be there. And she thanked me and said, you have no idea how much that means. And I just felt like I wanted to do something, and so I decided to send her just a beautiful arrangement of flowers from my husband and I. And I thought and thought and thought and thought about what to put on the card. And so I put this, never forget you cut ties with your father not because you didn't love him, but because you loved yourself enough to know you deserve to be treated better.

You get another a plus. Oh, really? That is incredible. That's so good. That's so good.

What what I'm hearing from that is the reinforcement of the choice that she made. And what I think is wildly important is that we remember just because somebody's dying doesn't mean that we then have to undo all the things. It doesn't make them a great person anymore. It doesn't make them a great person for us anymore. I think it's important that we tell the truth about who people are when they were living and after they die.

They tell the truth. We tell the truth about their impact on us. It doesn't change because they died. And when we make people saints after they died, it marginalizes, it disenfranchises the grief of those people that didn't experience them like that. Yeah.

You know? Yeah. It's like people still have to grieve complicated relationships. They still have to grieve when they haven't seen their parent in decades because they chose to step away. And sometimes to me, healing looks like that.

It doesn't look like maybe speaking the forgiveness. It looks like making a choice and reconciling it within ourselves.

Yeah. That's a lot.

It's big.

What advice do you have for all of us as we experience grief? Like how do you think about the process of grieving, which I don't think ever leaves?

No. It doesn't leave. It just changes form. You know, when I think about my brother-in-law, I still get emotional thinking and talking about him, and it's been it'll be 11 years this December.

Can you tell us about Peter?

Oh, I would love to. Peter was my older sister's husband, bosma saint John, as her husband. And I loved Peter. He was the only big brother I had. I didn't have 1.

And I was his younger sibling because he was the youngest of 7 and didn't have anybody he could exercise dominion over until I came around. Peter Peter was gregarious. He was silly and really, really smart and probably just as stubborn and self righteous as I am, which made for a lot of butting heads because he was really conservative in nature, and I am not. And so we just go to war over the death penalty and vegetarianism and veganism and just anything. We got along really, really well despite our challenges, and I got to support him in his death.

Did he know it was coming or was it an accident?

He knew it was coming. It wasn't long. He got diagnosed with Burkitt lymphoma in June, and by October they said they couldn't treat him anymore. So it was fast, but it was, the there was some awareness that was coming. Even though the doctors never they they never said he was dying.

They they said they couldn't treat him anymore.

Oh.

And that for somebody who was wishing, hoping with all hope that he would live, I did not hear that he was dying. I heard that they weren't gonna treat him. My brain maybe maybe made the jump, but my body, my spirit, my insides didn't wanna hear it, didn't wanna receive that.

How old was he? He was 43. You write about his death in your beautiful book, Briefly Perfectly Human. Would you mind reading us that passage on it's on page 53.

Oh, I'll do my best. Okay. Let's start here. As I'd done countless times before, I took my position at Peter's feet, which I'd regularly massaged with moisture rich lotion to prevent them from cracking. Today, they were cold and yellowing due to jaundice.

I since learned that in some faith traditions, the soul disengages from the feet first to leave through the head. I held them quietly and tearfully, thanking him for walking the earth and walking into my life and wished him well for wherever he was walking to next. Shortly before 4 AM, 4 days before his 44th birthday, my brother-in-law, Peter Saint John, breathed his last.

I feel like I'm right there in the hospital with you.

Every single time. Every single time. It doesn't the grief doesn't go anywhere. I just learn how to live with it. You know?

I learn, I think I learned how my grief wants to express. Gratefully, I get to talk about Peter all the time because of my work, because I learned how to do love through Peter. Many people don't get that chance. You know, people stop asking about that person after a while, but I still get to talk about Peter. I still get to remember him.

He feels very present for me even though I haven't heard his voice in almost 11 years. And, you know, he hasn't seen my niece as a teenager. He hasn't seen me finally get it together.

I think he'd be pretty proud of you.

Yeah. I hope so. I hope so.

What do you want the person listening to know about Peter and how he lived his life and how it impacted you?

It sounds wild to say, because when I look at it at a distance, it's, it kind of pinches in a way. But Peter's death did serve as a gift to me. Of course, I wanted him to live. And with the reality that he died, it ultimately created a lot of opportunity for me, and that's something that we don't think of. You know, I don't wanna I don't mean to bright side it.

That's not what I'm doing. Yeah. But rather, I'm seeing what was created from his death, which was for me a real purpose. Like, I learned how to doula. I got real angry about how society does death.

I wanted to do something about it. I created a company to do it. I teach people how to be death doulas. I'm still angry about how he died. I still wish that he got better, but that has now turned into fuel to support other people.

Grief allows a new version of ourselves to emerge. It allows whatever version is being held and boxed in to come to light. It allows the ceiling of self to grow because when it's all cracked open, who wants to come out? All bets were off. I didn't even wear pants for a while.

I was like, forget it. I don't have to. I'm grieving. I'm sad. Everybody's just gonna have to deal.

And what I saw was me that was really on purpose, who was really on fire, who was clear about what she wanted to create in the world, and I used my grief to support me in doing it. That grief became it became a way through. It still is a way through. Grief can be useful. It's hard, but it can be useful.

We're all dying, and we're all gonna die. Correct.

We are all dying, and we should be talking about death. When I'm thinking about my death, it allows me to see exactly who I've become. And knowing that I'm still living, I have an become and knowing that I'm still living, I have an opportunity to change it. I think death can be a great inspiration for us to start living more authentically and be real with who we are and who we wanna be.