Everyone dies. Every king, queen, emperor, pope, whatever, who has come before, say, the previous century, no matter how rich, no matter how pious — they all died. And so will we all when it is our time.

My family does not do funerals. We do celebrations of life. So, while you are still alive, give your family memories to celebrate when your time comes.

The Netflix series Thirteen Reasons Why was about what you’re talking about. People regretting how they treated you. The show is flat-out wrong. The only reason those characters care at all is because of the tapes spreading the gossip around. The show glorifies a teenage girl taking her own life by showing everybody react to it and regretting it and being sad and all this other stuff. In reality (especially without those damning tapes), only Clay would really mourn her (the main boy) and the rest of them would enjoy the days off from school, use the mental health services as a way to get out of classes, stuff like that. The ones who mistreated her, the ones who ignored her, and even most of the ones who liked her, would forget about her before too long.

So make them care. The people who matter. Recognise who they are and make good memories with them. The people who don’t matter? Either make them care, or focus on the ones who do.

Also, once you’re gone, it doesn’t matter what others think, because you’ll be gone. Even if you’re a Christian, I don’t recall the Bible saying your loved ones in Heaven can come visit. It’s not like they’re watching you. They only live in memory. And like they say, there’s three sides to every story (actually, more — every one of us is an entirely different person to each person who knows us) so it’s not even a true memory. But it’s the best we have, followed by photographic/video record.

So live your best life. Focus on what you can change, not what you can’t.