If you do a Google search right now for “deathbed quotes,” you’ll get thousands of responses.
I love checking those out, perhaps because I’m a word junky and want to hear everyone else’s wisdom because mine feels so sparse some days. But I also want to know what insights one has when faced with their own morality.
I know we all think we’re going to be the exception, that death just might not be in the cards for us after all. It seems to be a universal truth, especially if you’re under forty.
Humphrey Bogart allegedly said, “I should never have switched from scotch to martinis,” on his deathbed. “All my possessions for a moment of time,” is credited to Queen Elizabeth I. “Now, now, my good man, is not good time to be making enemies,” is what Voltaire said in response to a priest asking him to renounce Satan.
But here’s one of my favorites, credited sometimes to Paul Tsongas, and sometimes to a friend who wrote to him shortly before his death.
“Nobody on his deathbed ever said, ‘I wish I had spent more time at the office.'”
Someone recently added the works, “. . .or on my computer.” Perhaps “. . .or on Facebook.”
Strange words from me, someone who is speaking to you from their computer. But when I’m done here, I plan to turn this machine off and spend a couple of hours reading and writing by hand and then, fingers crossed, playing with my five month-old grandson.
Especially in these days of political unrest and the pandemic, think about what your deathbed self might say to your January 2021 self. It might go like this, “Stop watching the news nonstop. Get off your computer. Sit on a bench outside, even if you have to do it in a parka. Play with a child. Do a puzzle. Turn your anxious brain to sorting your closet or having a glass of wine with your best friend.”
Find the off button. Disconnecting will help us all see more clearly all the things we’re grateful for. At least that’s what I’m going to try today.
I’d love to hear how disconnecting works for you today.
Bunny Terry is a native New Mexican who grew up on a farm in northeastern New Mexico. Her first writing job was typing stories on index cards on her family’s Underwood, stories that were uncannily like the ones she read over and over in O Ye’ Jigs and Julips, her favorite childhood book. No one thought to save those index cards for posterity, although there is the theory sarcastically circulated by her siblings that they will certainly be worth millions someday. 