Why are a person's last words regarded so highly? Why are they held above everything else that the person may have said in their life? What is it that makes people crowd around an individual's bedside and wait for those final words to be uttered, hanging on every syllable as if it was a truth more profound than life itself?
Certainly, by the end of life, one would have a greater knowledge, a vaster wisdom, and perhaps even a better understanding of this thing called existence. But that isn't determined by the final moments before death, it's built up over the years into the total of their knowledge. I doubt there to be an epiphany that occurs right before the end that illuminates everything and necessitates a fantastic summary in a couple of whispered words.
A person's last words, in my opinion, should be no different than those they spoke throughout their entire life. What a person says or does, be it immediately before death or fifty years before they find themselves in that bed, is a reflection of their individual values, virtues, ideas, beliefs. What people say on an everyday basis is far more accurate in how they will be remembered than a broken fragment at the end of their life could be.
So why then are these words so carefully guarded, so greatly anticipated, so eagerly hoarded and clung to? Why do we attempt to place such a significance on those words which mean no more than any others that had once been said? Why do we attribute oh so much importance merely because of circumstance?
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