If you had one week left to live...

What would you do differently?

Here is my response

If I had one week left I know that I would be writing my autobiography. I’d wake up on the first day and boil enough water for two cups of coffee per day, although I doubt I’d need the stimulation of caffeine; but if I did, I would drink it cold black and quick without creamer or sugar. I’d put on the stove a large enough pot of lentils and rice for the week, but I wouldn’t stand over the stove while it cooked. When it was done, I’d place the finished product in two large containers and eat that cold and quickly too.
I’d spend every waking moment aware of the present yet driven toward that goal, and it wouldn’t matter that the chair I was sitting on was uncomfortable or that I had spent hours hunched over the computer, only that with every second I sit and write, I come closer to the goal and closer to the close. I’d write until I was utterly exhausted, sick and incapable of doing anything more for the day, then I might slip off into a fitful sleep, but I’d set an alarm to wake me up in five hours and start again. It wouldn’t matter that I won’t see sunlight or people for seven days. I wouldn’t be so cold or foolish to lock the door, but I wouldn’t let in company.
From the outside, it isn’t much of a glorious life, but it is the life of a dying person, watching the sands of the hour glass move from one place to another, watching her life escape and in this one week accomplishing her one life-long ambition. Comfort is excluded. Pain is excluded.
If I had one week left, I’d simply write. I wouldn’t worry so much about the elegance of my words or the excellence of my sentences, or whether anyone alive will ever read it. That I would place in the hands of God. My biggest fear is that I would die without ever finishing it, and that is as criminal as dying having never lived, capable of producing a masterpiece but dying with it still inside of me. I wouldn’t let those thoughts overtake me. I’d be laser focused. Instead, I’d pound upon the keyboard grammar be dammed, passion explode, and what would I say? “Hey you! Reader! I spent my last week crafting this for you! I let go of fear and pain and comfort to tell you this, so you’d better listen: You matter! Your life matters, your dreams matter and you are the only one who can accomplish them, so you’d better!”
As the last bit of sand slipped into the bottom of the hour glass, I’d put the last period on the last page and sit it beside the computer I had worked so feverishly at. I’d slip happily into the arms of Jesus, my work complete.
The reader might ask me, though I’d be dead, Rosalyn, what is impossible for me and with this book I would reply, “Nothing.”

I'd meditate deeply to prepare myself to pass in a state of peace and, hopefully, bliss. I think Plato wrote something along the lines of "the purpose of philosophy is to prepare ones self for death". So probably lots of meditation and good conversation. Oh, and getting my will in order.

First thing would be to take care of the people I'd leave. Yeah, I won't really care about the details and future, but they will.
After that, I'd honestly try and reconnect with people I'd grown away from without bringing up the deadline on my time left. I'd try to be a genuine friend to them, even for a short while. This includes people that I dislike, or people who dislike me; I'd prefer to leave with a clean conscience for both myself and them.
Finally, I'd write out a sort of apology (in the classical sense) for my life, and some notes for my closest friends to read later. I've sadly lived a life full of missed moments and unexplained circumstances, so I'd want to make sure to set my loved ones' at peace.
I'd fill my time between these activities by trying to make a difference. I'd hand out food at a soup kitchen or hugs in a hospital waiting room.
Why should anyone pamper the dying when the living can still be saved? I wouldn't want publicity, just a simple response of "Wow, thanks, that really helped" from one person

I did my Will & EPA a few months ago :blink:
So I'd focus on 'me';
1. Burn my computer :whistle:
2. buy a katana, go diving and fight to the death with the shark that decides to end me... there are plenty of big ones around where I live, so I'll see how many I can take before I'm a gonna.
:huh:
Might have a few days partying before that...... nothing against sharks but with the recent fishing limitations their populations are booooming, and it would be self defence, plus they get a feed if they survive. They don't have to try and eat me. Apex predators get it too easy.

I really have no idea , cuddle up to the ones i love i guess and ask forgiveness of the ones i hurt.

I'd spend as much of it as possible with my kids, and film as much of that as I could so they'd have something of me to hold on to. That would be my only priority to be honest. Maybe write them some letters for their birthdays. And write a will!

Hmmmm...... I'd find this girl who was my first kiss, and I'd tell her that I love her, then I'd leave, maybe watch a movie, Coraline maybe or something like that, then I'd dress in my best, spend all of my money, have the feast of a lifetime and die.

This was quite a topic of conversation at breakfast this morning ... My first thought about this was "I would panic and then lapse into an eerily despondent existential crisis" (like I really feel that just about all of us would really do).

Then again, although we don't think much about anything leading up to the moment of our demise generally - only harbouring some gruesomely imaginary moments of the 'demise' itself -, we tend to forget that at some unbeknownst time (perhaps already having begun), we enter that one-week countdown period. If one has things that we should like to do, behaviours that one feels one ought to cultivate, 'tis wise to do it now, rather than under the menace of imminent death ...

... for "imminent death" is our human condition anyway. 'Tis better to be living accordingly in every moment no matter how long - or not long - one thinks - or doesn't think - that time is going to be. For all I know, I could drop dead this afternoon : does what I have done this week correspond to the way I might dreamily answer the question posed ?

Thank you Ros for a very thought provoking question. I share the sentiments of others in terms of hoping to put affairs in order, and saying those things that need to be said - or rather - leaving nothing unsaid.

Whilst it is a 'thought experiment' it is very real: every single one of us, at some point, will be in the position where we only have one week to live. The subtle difference is that most of us will never know when that is exactly. Any one of us could be into that last week, right now.

Whilst it might not be possible to live with that in mind at all times - it might be worth remembering it every so often. Once a week maybe?

I'm with Marta, I have no clue what I'd do. It really would depend why I was about drop dead...