At 85, Jane Fonda thinks a lot about death—and she’s not necessarily worried about it, she said in a recent interview with CNN’s Chris Wallace. “I’m not scared of dying,” she said. “It’s an adventure. I don’t want to go—I still have a lot to do—but if I discovered I had cancer again, and there was nothing I could do, I’d be okay with it.”
However, the actor and climate activist does worry about looking back on her life and wishing she’d done certain things differently. When Wallace asked Fonda about her biggest regrets, she talked about her relationships with her three children, Mary (55), Vanessa (54), and Troy (49). “I was not the kind of mother that I wished that I had been to my children,” Fonda said. “I have great, great children—talented, smart. And I just didn’t know how to do it.” And she tries to compensate for this. “I’ve studied parenting, and I know what it’s supposed to be now,” Fonda said. “I didn’t know then. So I’m trying to show up now.” In a 2017 discussion with actor Brie Larson, Fonda explained one reason this is important to her: “You can learn…how to be a parent. It’s never too late,” she said. “When I die, I want my family to be around me. I want them to love me and I have to earn that. I’m still working at it.”
Fonda told Wallace that recognizing her regrets—and doing her best to rectify them when possible—is one way she is preparing for the end of her life. “It’s so important to try to clear everything up before you go,” she said. “What I’m really scared of is getting to the end of life with a lot of regrets when there’s no time to do anything about it. It’s one reason I’m trying to get it all done before I come to the end.”
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This isn’t the first time Fonda has been open about aging and her feelings on death. “I’m superconscious that I’m closer to death. And it doesn’t really bother me that much,” she said in an interview last year. “You know, you can be really old at 60, and you can be really young at 85.” That’s why she encourages others to stay focused on their well-being as they age. Earlier this month, she spoke about the importance of continuing to exercise as you get older, saying, “I come from a long line of really depressed people, and the best way to fight depression is to keep moving.”
And during a recent interview with CBS Sunday Morning, Fonda said she’s still interested in making new friends—and that people shouldn’t stop building these connections just because they’ve hit a certain age: “My favorite ex-husband, Ted Turner, said to me, ‘You don’t make new friends after 60,’” she said. “But I think he’s really, really wrong.”
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Source: SELF
