February 10, 2012

Friday Semi-Lite



The man with the cold.


  • Robin W, a nurse, wrote in her blog yesterday, “Bronnie Ware is an Australian nurse who spent several years working in palliative care, caring for patients in the last 12 weeks of their lives. She recorded their dying epiphanies and came up with the top five regrets of those who were dying.

    1. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
    2. I wish I hadn't worked so hard.
    3. I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.
    4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
    5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

    I was tremendously moved by this post. I, who have done some awful things, have apologized to every person I touched and written letters to those who are gone. I had to let go of my personal regrets to move on and live any sort of life at all. But there are regrets that touch life outside of oneself. I regret never knowing my father. He isolated himself from the world, he built a wall with his drinking. I regret not going often to see my grandmother as she lay dying in the same hospital where my father was dying. These are two regrets that have stayed with me.


  • The Great Geezer has a cold. He sounds truly pathetic. That mild stomach bug has migrated somewhere, and he’s a walking time bomb of no voice, coughs, and sneezes. I’ve loaded him up with every cold medication we have in the house and am hounding him to take them. Let us pray I don’t catch it. I have no desire to be sick for another six month period. We have to find folks to cover our commitments at our meetings. I cannot see G shaking hands with 200 plus folks.


  • I went to the meeting yesterday wearing my new hair and a green vest. Everyone said how nice I looked and attributed it to the vest. You and I know it’s the hair.


  • The sun is out. The day holds promise. I’ll stop by the store and get G some chicken soup on the way home from work. What more could one want.

8 comments:

  1. 1. Regrets are a terrible burden to carry. It's easier if, rather than hiding them, you take them out and talk them through, and then try to go on. (Remember, "what if" in the past is only fiction.)

    2. That's twice you have mentioned your new coif, and I haven't seen it yet.

    3. Hope the Geezer feels better soon. And, of course, take care of yourself. Wash your hands -- again.

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  2. Regret. How many we have all had for so many different reasons. It's important to forgive and move on - but never forget. Bless you. And bless Geezer with his bad cold. He must have been on the same flight with me. LOL!

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  3. Excellent post today. Enjoyed reading that list of people's regrets. Congrats on the new hair style. Very nice.

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  4. I LOVE that list. Have been seeing it posted around quite a bit, and I hope people will pay attention and take action in their life. We will all come to the end of the our story some day. I want to end on a very happy note, happy for the life I have lived. So far, so good.

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  5. Interesting post! Hope your hubby feels better soon.

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  6. Oh Chicken soup should do the trick.

    Regrets. My daughter has written me every day to tell me she is not speaking to me and today she said she is no longer going to communicate electronically with me. All this because I have a different memory from her about a painful event.

    Silly yes. But sillier things have cut me off from someone.

    Sometimes I wonder if I will regret anything when I die. I try to live so as to avoid that fate.
    Dianne

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  7. Regrets are heavy. I regret I have seen no pictures of your lovely new hair.

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  8. Chicken soup should do the trick.
    I'm desperately trying to think of some regrets.
    I think it probably isn't in my DNA.
    Onwards and upwards.

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