For What Its Worth: Thoughts on Bucket Lists

A colleague of my devoted husband's is living with a debilitating bout of cancer and struggling to maintain as normal a life as possible as he works his way through the treatment process.  Just this week in his weekly email update to his co-workers he mentioned that someone told him that if he had anything on his bucket list he should consider not putting them off.  I have been thinking about that statement all day

It made me think about my parents as an example.  They used to talk about how for one of their anniversaries they would go to France because that is where my mom's parents had come from.  They used to dream about how great that trip would be.  But then my dad got really sick with a brain tumor.  My mom went on that trip to France for her 30th anniversary, but she went without my father who had died years before she finally went.

It has really begun to bother me.  I don't want to think that the only reason that my husband and I are getting to do the amazing things we have always talked about doing, or are getting that fun toy we have always wanted to own is because one of us is dealing with or has just survived a life threatening illness. 


I don't want to call it my bucket list anymore.  I want to pick something really amazing that my husband and I have always wanted to do, or that and we have wanted to have;  or pick a place we have wanted to travel and fit them into our schedule and our budget now instead of waiting until it is too late or until we have some fear that drives us to do them.  Won't we enjoy them more this way?

For starters, I want my husband to plan an amazing golf vacation with his dad while they still both enjoy playing golf.  

Pax