Healing Relationships When You’d Rather Not
In the 5 Tasks of the Living to Prepare for a Peaceful Dying (from Facing Death and Finding Hope by Christine Longacker) we are charged with Step 2: Healing Relationships. But don’t worry; I’m not going to force you to confront every person you ever had beef with.
This step isn’t about forgiving the unforgivable or trying to make amends, unless that’s what you really need to do. This step, instead, is asking us to imagine being on our deathbed and to consider who we would want to be there with us. This won’t be every person you’ve ever had a close relationship with and it likely won’t even be every family member. If you set your ego aside and are really honest with yourself, there might be someone in the mix that you currently have tension with.
The deathbed isn’t really the place for rehashing the past and saying your piece, and more importantly, that opportunity may never come because real deathbeds don’t look like the ones in the movies. Loved ones rarely have pivotal conversations with the dying moments before they close their eyes forever. The dying have never died before. They don’t necessarily gain sage wisdom and say what we all need to hear. They are in labor. Can you have a critical conversation with a person who is in labor? They’re kinda busy at the moment. So when you die, you probably won’t be speaking, and will instead have one foot in this world and one foot in the next.
Healing your troubled relationships may be a one-sided activity. The person you have difficulty with may be dead, may be incarcerated, or may be someone you set a healthy boundary with long ago and have no intention of speaking with ever again, for example. Getting clear about your feelings with a therapist or spiritual guide may be the best you can do, but this step shouldn’t be glossed over. Find a way to process, no suppress, your feelings or you’ll carry the weight with you to your grave, and this baggage may color every important decision you make from now until then.
