Because I deal with death and dying every day -- I have owned and operated a hospice for over twenty years -- I have given some thought to this subject.  I thought that the movie of the same title was amusing but my approach would be very different.

Rather than my "bucket list" including new and novel things I want to do before I die, it includes revisiting places, events and people whom I have known.  If I knew that I would die, I would not rush around the world, but I would write my wife, children and grandchildren a letter of blessings which would include my hopes and dreams for them.  It would include my thanksgiving for having known and loved them.  It would include things which I would like for them to continue in my absence. Some of those things would involve faith, some family, some friends and some favorite things.

I would warn my wife about my life-insurance agent who declares that he will come calling the day after the "big event" both to comfort the widow and to suggest ways in which she might spend her "booty" -- on him. smile.

My "bucket list' involves the hope that I die "well." I am not a Roman Catholic, but John Paul II, died well.  Dying well means to me to die with grace and dignity. It means to die with no unresolved bitterness or unforgivenenss.  It means to die with the knowledge that I will have said everything I wanted to and needed to say to all those I love and care for.  My mother's family were American Indians, we think Cherokee. Indians had a "bucket list" which included "seeking a good death," which meant an honorable, noble, brave death. I wish to do the same.

Some of you will receive at the least a phone call and some a personal visit, if I become aware of my imminent death.  You may not have been an active, physical part of my life over the past fifty years, but many of you have made contributions to my life which I would wish to acknowledge in filling my "bucket."

Carolyn -- my wife -- and I both had a life-long wish to visit the American Cemetery at Normandy in France. We did that two years ago.  I have written about that experience. Those articles are a www.setma.com under Your Life Your Health.  A memory which continues to haunt me is of the hundreds of marble monuments which were inscribed, "Here Lies a Comrade in Arms, Known but to God."  Perhaps that is the most fitting epitaph, "to be known of God." 

A man whom I never met but who had a great influence on my life, Jim Elliot (he was killed by the Auca Indians in Ecuado in 1954), said, "Make sure that when it comes time to die, all you have to do is die."

See you in June, 2011.

Larry Holly