Our Bucket Lists

The sweetest story I’ve ever told is the one when Dad died the Wednesday night before Easter in 1995.   

He had been diagnosed with lung cancer 6 weeks before, a non-smoker preacher.  The nurse said it was in his genes.  I drove to Michigan from Georgia with my children 4 weeks later to say our good-byes.  But when the nurse called us all back within 2 weeks, I wanted to go again, alone.

He was lying in a make-shift bedroom on a hospice bed in the formal dining room of their home.  7 of us 8 children surrounded his bed (Bennett, the one who himself died a year later, had been with him earlier in the day).  We chatted and laughed nervously. 

Then Mom walked in from the kitchen.  In her early stages of Alzheimer’s, with hands on her hips in utter exasperation, she said, “WHEN is the funeral!?!?”

I, sitting at the foot of the bed massaging Dad’s feet, said with a giggle, “We won’t know, Mom, until Dad kicks the bucket!”

HAHAHA!  Even Dad started laughing…and then began:  “That reminds me of the grandpa whose little grandson was visiting him in his study, playing with the old waste bucket.  The grandson,   tossing his toys in and out of the bucket, asked if he could have it…..”  And without finishing the story, Dad trailed off into a 6-hour coma before dying.

We laughed because he hadn’t finished the story, which woke him up with a giggle to start the same story all over again from the beginning.  Each time he got close to the punch line, he’d trail off again, we’d laugh, he’d wake up with a giggle, and start all over again.  This happened 4 or 5 times.  He never finished the story with grandpa’s answer (which we already knew from his sermons):  “One day, yes, but not until I kick the bucket,” to which the grandson replied “Grandpa, could you kick it now?!”

That was Dad’s last conversation with us before he kicked his bucket.

Now, to connect the dots.

We all know that our Bucket Lists come from that kick-the-bucket idiom.  That is, we list what we really want to do before we die!

What I’ve always wanted to do for eons is a European river cruise.  Don’t ask me why, though I’m guessing it’s the castles.  Now that I live in Europe, you’d think it’d be as easy as pie, right?  Wrong, if you have a Dutch wife who doesn’t get it!

Flash back 1 ½ years to when we had American guests visiting us a week before their week’s river cruise from Amsterdam to Basel.  When we drove them to their boat and stepped onboard for all of 10 minutes, said wife immediately whispered, “Oh, I think I could do this!”

Long story to say that this Saturday we leave on a 15-day river cruise from Amsterdam to Budapest, the earliest cruise of the season in the cheapest room on board at two-for-the-price-of-one tickets.  Do we care that it will be cold?  Are you kidding?

Some more dots.  Though the above natal chart renders me naked, see that 9^th House of long-distance travel?  One of those 2 planets is Jupiter in his natural home, giving me “Good Luck” and expansion in travel.  In fact, our added 4 days in Budapest over Easter is when I expect Dad will be smiling down on us. 

As Astrid jokingly says, if we're gonna die anytime soon, please let it be AFTER our vacation! 

So…do you know what YOU want to do before YOU kick the bucket?!

It's a Small World After All

This week, Thursday, Astrid and I fly [faster than a tricycle without pedals!] to Liverpool from Amsterdam for a 5-day honeymoon.  We will be staying with Tracy, a fellow Shutterchancer (SC) whom we met 3 years ago and whom we call the 3rd Musketeer.  On Saturday morning we will meet up with the Three Stooges, 3 SC fellas (all from the UK) we have grown close to over the years:  Bill, Chris and Chad.  Astrid has already met them.  On Saturday afternoon we will then meet up with many other SCers from all over who will get together just for the halibut...most of whom have never yet met each other.

This has got me thinking about our virtual communities and the amount of time we spend with each other on our blogs, reading and commenting back-n-forth.  A virtual friend I recently met through this community, V&V, told me that sometimes these virtual friendships are more real than...reality.  I had to stop and think about that!  She may be right:  I spend more time with some of you than my friends from Atlanta (now that I'm on the other side of the Pond).  On SC I joke around with friends I've never met but whose sentences I can finish.

Our children and grandchildren are growing up in a world where this is the ho-hum norm.  While we all know of the "freak accidents" of the Internet world, sometimes with costly invasions of our privacy, we still bare our souls to each other, perhaps in ways we have never previously done.  If we actually meet in real life, a friendship can be truly cemented...for life.

Already in the young world of V&V I am starting to feel "connected."  Based on my blogging experience thus far, I'm guessing I'll eventually even meet some of you.  It's such a small world after all!  And Petra, a fellow collaborator here on V&V, is only 30 km away!  Sounds like a no-brainer, right?

And now that I think of it, Astrid and I met in 2007  through our SC photoblog community while commenting on each other's posts.  Three months later we had the chance to actually meet while I was in the Netherlands and then started doing photo hunts together.  Almost 3 years later, I moved to Holland where we are now wife and wife...getting ready to go on our honeymoon.

It's a small world after all!  I'm humming the tune of the Disneyland ride I have taken so many times, reminded of the "children of the world, frolicking in a spirit of international unity, and singing the ride's title track, which has a theme of global peace."

It's a world of laughter,
A world of tears.
It's a world of hopes,
And a world of fears.
There's so much that we share,
That it's time we're aware,
It's a small world after all.

There is just one moon,
And one golden sun.
And a smile means,
Friendship to every one.
Though the mountains divide,
And the oceans are wide,
It's a small world after all.

--By Richard M. and Robert B. Sherman

I would say that just about says it all!