Bucket List...

She had been a weekend TV watcher as a child. All of the old dramatic movies. Half of them in black and white. She loved the noir ones the best. Dark and moody but always, oddly, with a sense of hope. The last-minute phone call from the governor to save the wrongly convicted hero. She could watch those over and over. Tucked under a blanket in her family’s basement, munching on popcorn. Ignoring her parents’ pleas for her to go outside.

How shocked they would have been to see how she had changed. She traveled, she hiked, she camped, she spent a lot of time outdoors now. Seeing the world. It was one of life’s tragedies that the thing that got her to finally listen to them and go outside more was their deaths.

When she was cleaning out their house, she had found all of their “someday” travel folders. They had collected travel brochures, magazine articles, postcards and just a variety of things showing places from all over the world. Places there were going to go, someday. Just someday didn’t come soon enough for them.

It changed something fundamental in her. She wasn’t going to look back at the end of her life and think she’d missed something. Anything. She started with their lists and picked places that sounded interesting to her as well. In those places she scattered a bit of their ashes. She didn’t believe it meant anything to them, but it did to her. At least some part of them got there. She found comfort where she could take it.

Once she got through the shared places that were interesting to her as well as her parents she branched out. Sometimes it was on the recommendation of someone she connected with in one of those locations. “Oh, have you been to…?” and she’d write it down and go there too. She tried to send a thank you note to each person who had suggested the new place. A photograph of her smiling widely. Leaving her mark on the world as well as seeing it.

Today was Yosemite. She was a little embarrassed it had taken her so long to get here. It was practically in her own backyard. But that was why it had taken so long. It was always on the list as an easy to get to place. The farther locations took more planning, it was easy to “someday” Yosemite. But today was someday. She stood and looked out at the view. Spectacular. Breathtaking. All of the cliches came to mind. But she guessed that they were cliches for a reason.

The spring had been a wet one and even though she stood quite a distance from the waterfall she could feel the spray of mist on her face. The warm sun in the sky and the cold mist from the falls. It was a beautiful day. The canyon spread below her, so far down. Granite cliff walls all around. It was a hard beauty. That’s what she thought. Some places had soft beauty, the rolling green hills in Ireland. But this was jagged and rough. Impressive and breathtaking.

She pulled a bottle of water from her backpack and took a long drink. The water was a little warmer than she would have liked but she hadn’t bothered with ice packs today. Just a lighter load to carry. She turned her face to the sun again.

The results came last week. The cancer was everywhere. Incredibly invasive. Incredibly fast. They could try chemo, but the chances weren’t great. It was really up to her. They would, of course, try everything she wanted them to. Or nothing at all. If she just wanted to wait it out and then get a strong morphine drip in hospice that could be arranged as well.

She didn’t want to do either of those. She pulled the two duplicate notes from her backpack. One she pinned to the shorts she was wearing, the other she pinned to the backpack itself. Odds were at least one of them would be found that way.  

She smiled. She thanked her parents for the inspiration to finish that someday list. And then she stepped from the edge of the cliff.

Somewhere a phone rang.