Regret, Remorse & Repentance

Let’s face it. As the old saying goes, only death and taxes are certain. Certainly, at almost 85 years old, I am much closer to Gabriel than diapers (perhaps:-).) Bonnie Ware in 2019 released a book titled “The Top Five Regrets of the Dying.” Amazon has this to say about her writings: “After too many years of unfulfilling work, Bonnie Ware began searching for a job with heart. Despite having no formal qualifications or previous experience in the field, she found herself working in palliative care. During the time she spent tending to those who were dying, Bonnie’s life was transformed. Later, she wrote an Internet blog post, outlining the most common regrets that the people she had cared for had expressed. The post gained so much momentum that it was viewed by more than three million readers worldwide in its first year. At the request of many, Bronnie subsequently wrote a book, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, to share her story.) (link)

Her copyright (all five are linked here) precludes bloggers and essentially anyone from quoting more than one of her five findings, so we’ll go with the first and most common:

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. She concludes her number one regret with “Health brings a freedom very few realise, until they no longer have it.”

This is really really impactful for those of us on dialysis. There are hidden impacts that are not well documented. For instance, I went to bed last night just after 9 PM, not because I was particularly tired, but because if I didn’t it would be late morning before my dialysis was completed. With the 10,000 4X dwell prescription I am currently on, and it’s not likely to get shorter, I’m spending between 10 1/2 hours and almost 11 hours just on dialysis itself. This does not include time to hook up and get off. All told, we’re looking at over 12 hours per day devoted to just dialysis. This severely curtails the time for other activities. So yes, my health has severely curtailed my freedom.

But I did not fall for doing only what others expected of me. A couple of life stories. For our thirtieth wedding anniversary, I bought my wife an arrest-me red Porsche as her own. She was not expecting this and it was not in keeping with us living our dream on a farm on a gravel road in Indiana. As part of the package, I also bought her a weekend on a local race track to learn how to take advantage of her Porsche’s power and handling. People who race Porsches were the instructors, and during breaks, they were on the track playing race day with their cars. I saw that they were having too much fun which caused me to become a Porsche racer also.

I still am a licensed Porsche racer to this day. While I’m not on the track anymore, the experience is vivid in my mind and incorporated into my driving skills even at almost 85. Live does go on; until it doesn’t.