Focus your life with a ‘bucket list’

  • By Linda Bryant-Smith, Herald columnist
  • Monday, October 15, 2007 3:43pm
  • Life

Late the other night (when I couldn’t sleep) I made a list of all the things I need to do the next day.

I have found that many of my peers in the Medicare generation have also evolved into list makers. Probably because we’re afraid we’ll forget something and our significant other will see it as a sure sign of our old age or, worse yet, Alzheimer’s.

My husband has at least three lists going at all times because he usually has misplaced one or two of them. That may be because he makes his lists on old envelopes or the backs of advertisements or other scraps he digs out of the wastepaper basket.

Since I have a fetish about clean kitchen countertops, I tend to toss what appears to be wastepaper into the aforementioned basket.

Thus, lost lists, a vicious cycle:

“Where is that list I made this morning?”

“How would I know?”

“Did you throw it in the garbage?”

“Where did you leave it?”

Well, you know the rest.

Then there is the ultimate list, the “bucket list.” As in “What I want to do before I kick the bucket.” This, it turns out, is the subject of a new movie starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, neither being what you’d call a spring chicken.

The story focuses on two men, both with terminal illnesses, who decide there are things they still have to do in the time remaining. Freeman, explaining the idea to Nicholson, calls it his “bucket list.”

How this will play on the big screen as a comedy is for moviegoers to decide. But I see value in such a list as a gentle reminder that each day we have is a gift and we should use it wisely.

I once had a roommate from Korea who told me that in her culture, she was taught that a successful person must learn at least one new thing each day. It could be anything; acquiring a new skill, mastering a new recipe, or reading an excellent book. But by nightfall, she was expected to be able to give thanks for that new learning opportunity the day had presented.

When we retired a decade ago, my husband’s bucket list was headed by his dream of being able to travel in an RV, meet new people and spend winter in the dry-desert warmth of southern Arizona.

Years of Northwest Washington wintertime commutes in rain-swept darkness reinforced this dream. And so, being open to something new, I adopted his dream.

Each October, we packed up and headed south. Friends we met that first winter became a family of sorts as the years passed. E-mail linked us through the spring, summer and early fall.

Then, as October approached, the messages began to list departure dates from Virginia, Missouri, Oregon, Illinois, Washington and Alberta, Canada. The clan was gathering for a winter of card playing, crafts, fishing, happy hours and general playtime.

I’ve come to think of southwest Arizona as a giant sandbox surrounded by golf courses, swimming pools, baseball diamonds and tennis courts where all the old kids play.

For most snowbirds, work lists are nonessential except in early spring when they get out the travel checklist to ensure the RV is ready to head north.

This summer, we crossed the snowbirding dream off our bucket list. A variety of reasons, both financial and personal, made it more practical to sell our fifth wheel. Then, a few days ago, we sold his big red Dodge Ram 2500 with the famed Cummins diesel under its shiny hood.

I know he could make a list right now of why a man should never be without a big, noisy truck that can tow 15,000 pounds effortlessly and be heard three blocks away when it’s chugging toward home.

He was, and is, in mourning.

“I’ll never have a truck that nice again,” he says.

I should have known the separation of man from truck would be unbearable and that his friends would immediately come to his aid. One already took him to see a guy who knows a guy who might have an older Chevy 210 in great condition that could be for sale.

I am, of course, the heartless b—— who wants to put the money in the bank as an emergency fund. People our age need emergency funds and a single vehicle that is fuel efficient, I said.

Oh, boy, am I in trouble.

So, after a long sleepless night next to the man in mourning, I have decided we need to sit down and make a bucket list together. And if it includes another truck ( preferably small and not too expensive) to haul stuff and drive down to pick up the mail, then so be it.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I can check off No. 4 on my list for today: write my column and work on No. 5: Put away summer clothes; get out winter jeans and sweatshirts.

Linda Bryant Smith writes about life as a senior citizen and the issues that concern, annoy and often irritate the heck out of her now that she lives in a world where nothing is ever truly fixed but her income. You can e-mail her at ljbryantsmith@yahoo.com.

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