This brings up an interesting point: should we trust people about their deathbed regrets?

I mean, let's face it. You're lying there, surrounded by your relatives, and everybody is sad. You're going to want to say something life-affirming about how you wish you'd spent more time with your children or smelled more flowers or listened to the wind blowing through the trees or something like that... something that sounds appropriate for the situation, and something that people will think well of you for.

You don't want to say "I wish I'd married a different woman" or "I should have stopped after my first two children" or "If only I'd gone to law school", even if those are your deepest regrets. There's a certain amount of social pressure to only talk about pleasant life-affirming things, so that's pretty much what you're going to get.