‘Send Flowers To the Living. The Dead Never See Them.’

In “30 Lessons for Living: Tried and True Advice from the Wisest Americans,” author Karl Pillemer interviewed thousands of what he calls “older people” — primarily those at least 65 years of age, who “have lived life and learned from it.” From his interviews, he identified and writes about 30 lessons in five categories:

• Marriage
• Parenting
• Aging
• Living without regrets
• Happiness

Here’s one of my favorite excerpts:

In everyday life, people often regret things they’ve said. We lose our temper and let someone have it, only to rue our hasty words. Or we e-mail an off-color joke that comes back to haunt us (and these days, it can travel around the world in a couple of minutes). However, when it comes to deep, long-lasting regret, the experts pointed instead toward things left unsaid. The view from later life is this: if you have something to say to someone, do it before it’s too late. The experts emphasize this lesson either because they are grateful that they spoke up while there was still time or because they profoundly regret not having done so.

Ralph Veliz, seventy-two, reinforced this point by offering an insightful aphorism: “Send flowers to the living. The dead never see them.” His rule for regret-free living: do it now.

If you like that advice, you’ll probably like the book.  For some more excerpts, see this article about the book by columnist Jane Brody in The New York Times, “Advice From Life’s Graying Edge on Finishing With No Regrets.”

As for sending flowers to the living, what do you think? Are you more likely to regret doing (or saying) something — or not doing (or saying) it?