Bucket List Part Two

“If you had a year to live, what would you do?”


People ask each other this question over lunch or sitting on the couch at home watching TV.

More often than not people’s lists include travel, adventures, skydiving, seeing the Grand Canyon, or any number of things.
There was even a movie where two older men were dying and traveled around the world.

For Mathew, the reality was, what can you do in 11 months when half of that time was spent in the hospital, often times too sick to read or write because this was the reality of stage 4 soft tissue Sarcoma.

The other half of the time, at home, immune compromised, all the time in pain. Each day provided maybe three hours of energy and concentration.

Add in doctor visits and outpatient procedures and anything beyond that was a bonus. A few times we stopped on our way home from appointments and Mathew bought a book or a new game or we stopped for lunch.

Fortunately, two of the things on Mathew’s bucket list was passive on his part; his brothers birthday and the birth of his nephew.

Something I admired about Mathew was that his bucket list involved goals he had pursued for years. He practiced guitar several hours a day and worked on his music even when he could barely function in life, pre-diagnosis. This is one of the qualities I remember when I think about Mathew’s life. He lived it as if he knew his time was limited.