Our thoughts on our death bed

I know, not exactly a topic to cheer the soul, but one day it will be us on that bed thinking back over our lives. Of course, the 'death bed' is just a useful metaphor to focus the mind on the end of life and what our assessment of our own lives will be.

It's only in recent years that I've thought about this, but naturally, when more time is behind you than is in front, there appears an urgency as to what needs to be done to make your life count, for it to have been worthwhile and for it to have some value. In writing about the end of life I find that there is a paucity of vocabulary; or at least a real lack of words which are not cliches. The word 'worthwhile' smacks of good deeds; the very words 'good deeds' returning me to the Baptist church I was semi-forced to attend as a child, where a very narrow-minded Sunday school teacher was forever telling the children in her class to do good deeds and worthwhile acts, when what we witnessed weekly from her was cruelty, as she told various children that they were disgusting, that Jesus certainly wouldn't be shining his light on the children who she personally took a dislike to, or, as in one girl's case, was told that she shouldn't be in Sunday school at all as her mother was a ....wait for it....divorcee! Fair enough, times were different in the 1960s and society altogether harsher, but the child being the daughter of a divorcee would carry sufficient stigma as she grew up, without Eileen H. doling out the pitiless treatment. Not quite what Jesus meant by, 'Suffer little children...'

With no real choice then other than to employ these hackneyed words and phrases, it's very interesting to consider what we mean by worthwhile and how we feel we have (or haven't) accomplished or achieved something deserving of the worthwhile stamp.

If you would like to share your views on what you consider a worthwhile life, please do. I have some thoughts about the topic but wouldn't presume to impose them on others.

Just for the record, I am an atheist, but if there were a hell, I know of a certain Sunday school teacher who may well be already there.