6-28-15 Post: Death Bed Conversations

Question/Comment: My father is close to his death bed and I want to confront him on the things he did wrong in his relationship with me.

Response: You don’t say how close your father is to dying. If he is gravely ill, or incapacitated in any way, he may not be able to engage in a meaningful conversation. Confronting him might help you to feel better or you may be much more deeply hurt and angry. It is a risk. What mistakes you father made are not mentioned in your comment but hopefully you can have compassion for him. Unless he initiates that conversation, it might be kinder and more loving to assist him in his process of transition without telling him off. 

There is no way to change the past and any healing you do has to come from within you, anyway. If he still has the ability and is not on his death bed yet, maybe a conversation would be healing for the relationship between the two of you.  Depending on how close he is to death, initiating such a conversation could distract him from his dying process.

In my opinion it is important that a person focus on their dying process and do so with as much conscious awareness as possible. One of the most loving and kind things one can do in life is to assist someone in their transition out of this life. When we do this, the focus has to be on the person dying, their needs, their wants, their process. Assisting a person in dying needs to be a selfless gift. From what I have observed, each individual who knows they are approaching death, will do their own review of their lives and decide what their regrets are. Their list may not agree with yours. 

Various traditions, have stated in various ways, that the individual will have an assisted review of their life after their death. It seems that they are provided with many opportunities to see how their actions impacted others until they learn understanding and empathy. Maybe you believe that after death there is nothing, that we simply cease to exist. The questions reman the same. What do you hope to gain by a confrontation; what if you are further hurt by the attempt at the conversation; what is the kind, loving thing to do for your father? 


Some questions to ask yourself could be as follows. What is your reason for wanting to confront your father; what do you hope to gain; are you seeking revenge on someone who is now incapacitated; how will you react if you do not get an apology, an admission of guilt or see remorse in him; are you thinking of yourself, your father or someone else in wanting to confront him; who be helped by the confrontation and who would be harmed; would anything be changed for the better; how will you feel about yourself later?