Dealing with Regrets after Someone Dies

Cremations are included in the cremation services offered in Dayton, OH. However, after someone we love dies, we may find ourselves dealing with regrets in our relationship with that person.

Regrets have an interesting both-sides-of-the-coin aspect. We can either remedy something we regret that we have done or said to someone we love as soon as possible or we can nurse the regret, but not do anything to remedy it.

Before we start thinking that the second aspect of regret is foolish or dumb, we need to back up and see why people might not take any action to remedy their regrets with someone they love. These reasons are integral to who we are as humans.

One reason why people don’t fix things they regret saying or doing to someone they love is because they’re embarrassed about their behavior and they don’t want to bring it up again. They hope that it will all just disappear with time. However, many of the things that we do that we regret don’t disappear. Sometimes they create divisions and rifts that permanently affected our relationships with our loved one. In short, we don’t forget and they don’t forget.

Another reason why people may not fix the things they regret in their dealings with a loved one is because they don’t want to face the consequences of their behavior. When we say and do things that hurt people we love, part of the remedy is to allow them to express their hurt, their disappointment, and their anger about what we did.

Read also: Creating Memorials Outside of the Cemetery

These emotional reactions to our behavior can be very painful to hear and see, even though they are necessary to open the door to peace and reconciliation, which can remove the regret and repair the relationship between us and our loved one.

It may be that handling the pain can seem like a higher price to pay than living with regret and fractured relationships.

The problem, however, with not taking action to dispel regrets by making amends for bad behavior on our parts toward someone we love is that one day – the day they die – it will be too late to fix things.

When that day comes, guilt will come knocking on our doors. We will remember – and perhaps put on automatic replay – the exact things we said and did to our loved ones that caused hurt or damage to our relationships with them.

That can cause regret because we wished we could take that part of time back, erase it, and start over with a clean slate, but we realized it’s too late.

We can also feel regret because we didn’t take the steps necessary to address the things that we said or did to hurt our loved one and to fix the breach that we created. We may find that much of our sorrow and grief about their deaths is about missing this opportunity when we had it.

The reality is that when our loved one has died, our regrets, in a sense, die with them. We can’t change that past because it is gone.

So, how do we make peace with those kinds of regrets? We can actually make profound and positive changes in our lives from the regrets we have after a loved one dies. One way to do that is to consciously decide to work hard at never repeating that type of behavior with anyone else we love.

For information about cremation services offered in Dayton, OH, our caring and knowledgeable staff at Glickler Funeral Home & Cremation Service is here to assist you. You can visit our funeral home at 1849 Salem Ave., Dayton, OH 45406, or you can call us today at (937) 278-4287.