Bucket list postponed…

Yesterday’s visit to the oncologist resolved a dilemma I had been agonizing over for several weeks.  The question I faced was whether I should prepare my “bucket list” or should I renew my magazine subscriptions.  Time and Food Network Magazine will be pleased to learn I am renewing for another year.  I am not so optimistic as to take advantage of their special two-year rates but the spots on my lung and liver have remained benign and the esophageal cancer does not seem to have returned.

I must admit, I did compile certain items for my bucket list just in case.  The top two things I had resolved to do before permanently departing were to finish landscaping my back yard and clean the garage.

               You may find that strange, but when faced with the possibility of actually having to prepare a list of things I wanted to accomplish while still here, nothing particularly dramatic or spectacular came to mind.  I’ve already learned how to fly an airplane and as pilots used to say, “Why would anyone want to jump out of a perfectly good airplane?”  So skydiving was out of the question.

               I have traveled to the Orient (complements the U.S. Navy); I’ve lived in Paris, London and Milan as well as in several large American cities and really don’t like travelling any more (thank you airlines), so the Great Wall of China and African safaris are also out.  I’ve had a varied career as a newspaper correspondent, marketing executive and magazine owner/editor and photographer.  Would I change some things if I could?  Sure.  Was is all bad?  Of course not.  So when the oncologist said to me, “See you in six months,” that was good enough for me.

Certainly, age has a lot to do with my attitudes towards preparing for the hereafter.  I’m sure if I were younger I would view approaching mortality much differently and with a considerable degree of sadness.  A young person dealing with cancer still has a long list of things to be hoped for and accomplished but must face the possibility and disappointment that they may never happen.  Parents with children undergoing the horrors of chemotherapy must feel an unimaginable agony.

But at my stage of life--at slightly over three-quarters of a century--hopes and dreams give way to stark reality.  I have reached the point where I have no fear of the inevitable so I have adopted the philosophy expressed by one of my favorite comedians, Red Skelton, who said:  “When I wake up in the morning and I don’t hear organ music and smell roses, it’s going to be a good day.”