Yesterday I went to my third funeral this year. All of them were unexpected. When somebody dies with little or no warning it’s too easy to get caught up in feeling that they were cheated out of their remaining time; that the universe had cruelly stopped all their plans and projects in their tracks. I saw the grief of other mourners similarly focusing on such things, which inspired me to write a poem that tries to re-frame those unfinished things as something more positive.
Please share a link to this page if you feel these words might help someone you know. There’s a second, shorter version as well as details about how you can use and even modify this piece further down the page.
Click here for a printable PDF containing both versions of the poem.
Do not mourn for things not done
Do not mourn for things not done,
For all the words unspoken.
For plans you’ll never see complete,
For promises now broken.
The bookmark only halfway through.
The seeds just sown in the border.
The puzzle missing pieces still.
The books on shelves, all out of order.
The dripping tap or broken pot,
Still marked “to do” upon a list.
An unsent letter, incomplete.
A chat with friends, forever missed.
A grand day out with those held dear.
A holiday untaken.
Arrangements for a family meal.
A world of plans forsaken.
But how much worse to have no plans?
To only live within your past.
Nothing to wake each morning for,
Just marking days until your last.
So when it finally comes my time,
Tell my family! Tell my friends!
That all the mess I left behind,
Shows I lived life until the end.
So do not mourn for things not done,
Nor grieve for things unsaid.
Be grateful of unfinished things,
For these are the signs of a life well led.
— © Mark Crutch, 2021, licensed under CC BY 4.0 
This poem (and the version below) is licensed under a Creative Commons CC-BY license. This means you are free to use or modify it in any way you want, even commercially, provided you include a credit. I ask for this only so that other people might be able to find the original source more easily, should they wish to use it either as it was originally written or with their own modifications. If you do modify the poem, please attribute it as “based on words by Mark Crutch”, or “based on a poem by Mark Crutch”, although any similar attribution is fine.
The second, third and fourth verses, although written to be reasonably generic, do contain lines that reference aspects of the people I have lost this year. I encourage anyone to adapt or replace these parts if you wish to, in order to make the poem more relevant to your own loved ones. If you’re short of space or time, these verses can be omitted entirely to give an abridged version that, I think, still broadly works as intended:
Do not mourn for things not done (abridged)
Do not mourn for things not done,
For all the words unspoken.
For plans you’ll never see complete,
For promises now broken.
But how much worse to have no plans?
To only live within your past.
Nothing to wake each morning for,
Just marking days until your last.
So when it finally comes my time,
Tell my family! Tell my friends!
That all the mess I left behind,
Shows I lived life until the end.
So do not mourn for things not done,
Nor grieve for things unsaid.
Be grateful of unfinished things,
For these are the signs of a life well led.
— © Mark Crutch, 2021, licensed under CC BY 4.0
Finally, the name of the poem. I’ve gone with the first line as the title because it summarises the point being made, and is also reprised at the start of the last verse. But it does feel a bit heavy and ponderous – almost like a song from some dark corner of an obscure hymn book. So if it suits you better, please feel free to refer to it by an alternative name: “Be grateful of unfinished things”, or even just “Unfinished things” if you prefer. Ultimately the title is the least important part, except in that it might help someone to find this original posting.
To anyone who has read this far, and who has perhaps found some comfort or solace in this poem, my sympathies are with you and I am glad to have been able to help lighten your grief, if only by a little.