I’m sometimes asked if I have a bucket list – a list of things I’d like to do before, as the saying goes, I ‘kick the bucket’.  It seems that it’s something that someone with an incurable cancer might consider. Typically, such a list might include aspirations to visit the world’s most beautiful places (‘see Venice and die. Tick.’). Or it could include a goal of some kind:  to write a book; jump out of an aeroplane; get married.

My personal bucket list is blank. I have no wish to go anywhere, save a short walk up the garden or an occasional trip to meet family or friends. I have seen as much of the world as I want to and, in any event, I was always a reluctant traveller.  As for jumping out of an aeroplane, I can barely withstand the perils of a merry-go-round. The book is safely locked within and will never be written let alone published. And though I am blessed with a wonderful marriage, I have no desire to repeat the wedding. The vows are holding up.

Whatever adventures are ahead of me will be confined largely to the 800 square feet of my home and garden, in my mind and most of all, in my close relationships.

Deeper 

Cancer treatment frequently leaves me fatigued and often struggling to manage symptoms. Some days I am not equal even to a trip to a local shop. My physical world has shrunk to the corresponding frailty of a body beset by side-effects. But while my world has become smaller, it goes deeper.

What I have lost in the breadth of day-to-day busyness, I have more than gained in the depth of presence in my experience.

I’m frequently reminded of the first time, aged nine, I tried on a pair of spectacles for my short-sightedness: the vividness of colours, the sharpness of shapes, took my breath away. All my other senses seemed amplified by the correction of my blurred vision.

My imagination provides all the adventures I need; in some ways, it always has. I can travel to the most surprising places without leaving home. I’m the last word in sustainable tourism. A well-stocked library, an eclectic music collection and on-demand film and theatre are all the nourishment my hungry mind needs. And then there’s all the creative making and doing: the bread, cakes, journalling, dancing, drawing, visualising, storytelling and when my nerve-damaged fingers can bear it, piano playing. In a culture that’s obsessed with gainful employment and profitable enterprise, hobbies are sneered at as unrecompensed ways for enthusiastic amateurs to pass the time. In truth, they can help us fulfil that fundamental human drive to achieve and we can do so in more creative ways when freed of the obligations of conventional employment.

Attuned 

There is of course our small outdoors. The garden is our personal Eden. Even on the edge of a post-industrial city, I can access a local park, a small river, deciduous woodland (my heart melts at the sight of so many baby oaks), hedgerows bursting with birds and bugs and fruits to forage in the autumn: damsons, elderflower, hazelnuts and blackberries. Since I live life with greater attentiveness, I feel more fully attuned to the seasons.  I can sense the subtle shift from summer to autumn just by sniffing the air.  And like many landlocked souls, I miss the sea, but the occasional cry of migrating gulls in summer evokes the beautiful Welsh coasts I explored as a kid.

In this shrinking patch, I have discovered that the greatest adventures are to be found in relationships.

The imposition of mortality removes the caution between us. We don’t need to pick the ‘right time’ because the right time is always now to say the things we need to say.

When a larger threat looms, we might feel more readily able to be vulnerable with another, to take a risk. When I notice someone hesitating to say something, I find myself urging them to cut the crap. “Just say it!” Those words will bring us closer together, here and now. When one of us is no longer here, I believe we will sometimes find ourselves recalling those conversations – for comfort, wisdom or understanding. Like the lyrics of a favourite song, they will lovingly and forever anchor us to a time and place and relationship.  They will become our emotional reference points as we negotiate our grief.

 Relentless 

I guess the other reason I resist the bucket list is it seems to suggest that the relentless seeking out of sensation and meaning is the only way to live life to the full, especially where notice has been served on that life. That might be true for a much younger person of course. But I want to potter, engage in the dull and desultory, to waste time seemingly by dreaming or mooching in a small space. I don’t want to live each day as if it’s my last: the responsibility to do so would be intolerable. I can only live each day as if I have forever. Forever now that is. Time spent organising, executing and ticking off adventures on a bucket list would be such an exhausting distraction. I’m done with lists of all kinds. I wish to meander away from the vertical. It’s time for me to be.