Never liked the expression “bucket list”. Along with everyone else, I was always happy to have a few unfulfilled aspirations, but they were ones preceded by, “One day, when I have more time, I will …” But faux-funny euphemisms about death – about doing things before one kicks the bucket or pops one clogs, cashes in one’s chips or falls off one’s perch? Bleurgh.
Apart from anything else, I’m no longer physically able to kick buckets, or even pop clogs. Perhaps the only euphemism I can entertain is pushing up daisies, because I’ve learnt how, when life knocks you down, you seek to push them up in very different ways. Here, then, my pre-accident Daisy List.
1. Never let down the people who love and need me. Repair past lousy decisions.
2. Become fluent in French. Acutely, effortlessly, instinctively fluent.
3. Ditto, at dressage.
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4. Hike Alaska. Or Greenland. Or the Appalachian Trail.
5. Read every book in my possession I’ve never read. There are many. The Trollopes and political biographies and Booker winners I couldn’t find time for; and which I never quite figured out how other extremely busy people could either. Unless, perish the thought, they were bluffing.
6. Run 10K in under an hour.
7. Visit Australia.
8. Learn more about science. Finish the law degree I copped out on.
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9. Stop the car and climb that little hill I passed twice every day on the way to work.
10. Paint pictures again.
So there you are: a fairly typical mix of the trivial, practical, cerebral and emotional things lots of us would like to achieve in life. As thoughtless and lacking in altruism as any other Westerner’s dreams, and unusual only in missing out the compulsory fancy holidays to Machu Picchu and the Maldives. For the past 20 years, unless you are a trillionaire with enough money to bribe the authorities and chopper in at dawn to shoot lions or explore the catacombs before the crowds arrive, the international tourist trail has been hell redefined. We have worn out the world with footfall and photography.
You’ll have noticed the screaming omission on my old list: good health. It’s a list of dreams written with the blithe assumption of long life.Bucket lists are the preserve of the indulged healthy Western world. Eastern cultures, the refugee diaspora and the developing world doesn’t live that way. They’re thrilled to survive from day to day – and they tend to do so at a more spiritual level than the West. And maybe, just maybe, I can understand that better now.
My post-accident Daisy List, therefore, is life stripped back to its core, humbled and relearnt.
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1. As No 1 above.
2. Stay alive long enough to see my son established, secure and happy.
3. Stay alive as long as I can for my husband.
4. Remain in a bearable physical state – in as much as anyone with a chronic health condition can hope to.
5. Stay alive long enough to see a cure.
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6. Remember the old me. Hold on tenaciously to the memories of a working body. I tried very hard last week to imagine what standing up and pulling on a pair of jeans used to feel like. I simply couldn’t. Lacing up shoes. How did I do that?
7. Either use the loo normally or ski with dolphins. Whatever takes priority.
8. Regain the ability to walk from kitchen to living room carrying a cup of coffee.
9. Find some kind of peace.
10. Lie on the lawn and smell cut grass. And daisies.
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Much, I suspect, as most people deep down would wish for.
Dave totally dismisses the concept of a bucket list. “Dumb stuff,” he says. But I persist. What would you like to do before you die? He looks at me as if I’m stupid.
“Keep good health and live here.”
He’s never been one for euphemisms.
Melanie Reid is tetraplegic after breaking her neck and back in a riding accident in April 2010