Sanctified Bucket List

He looked very intently at me and said, "Eat your dessert first…you don’t have as long as you think." Counsel from another cancer survivor who stood with me outside Saddleback Church in Orange County. The balmy California air and Hawaiian shirts did not lighten my mood.

For emphasis, he touched the scar on my neck created by the lymph node dissection. The warmth of the day cooled into deadly serious introspection. He was telling me that I did not have as long to live as I thought. I had to come face to face with my own mortality, the shortness of life and the things I had yet to accomplish.

I don’t think he meant “Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die.” He was a fellow Christian, a retired military chaplain from a conservative denomination. I refuse to believe he was urging me to act irresponsibly and “party hearty.” It was not a “mid-life crisis” he was advising, at least not from my point of view. He was not advising me to get a faster car, a trophy wife or any other middle aged man’s inner adolescent fantasy.

No, I think he was urging me to get a sanctified “Bucket List” and do the most important things on that list first. Things like Love God with all my heart, Love others as much as I love myself. Show these two loves in how I go about living. Keep short accounts with God and with others. Have those conversations I had been putting off for years. Make sure my affairs are in order. Take the trip and make the memories we had been saying we would do ONE DAY. Do it now. ©2010 Ray Woolridge