My beloved partner Brian was a very young man when he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Doctors gave him an estimate of 6 – 12 months to live.

As timing would have it, the movie “Bucket List” had come out a year before. This caused much discussion among visiting friends that Brian should make a bucket list. Brian seemed disinterested. He made two concrete, but modest requests – the procurement of a beautiful bathrobe and the commitment to keep up on his grooming. Brian was a fastidious man, and I made his requests happen.

His friends talked of helping Brian attend Burning Man, of taking him on exotic travels and to do fantastic things. Brian’s lack of engagement in these topics made me suspicious that he felt worse than he looked. I was privately a little angry with his friends about the bucket list idea because I wondered if we would have enough time.

Twenty-two days after his diagnosis, Brian was gone.

With time, it occurred to me that I wanted to do a bucket list in remembrance of Brian. So I made a list of things that I imagine that he would have liked to do, as a way of actively engage in activities to remember him. I have my own personal bucket list. But I really wanted one to honor Brian.

There are websites to help: diddit.com, sharebuckets.com, my50.com, theburiedlife.com, to name a few. They have lots of advice.

The biggest thing about a bucket list is that it takes time to write a good, thoughtful list. It helps to expose yourself to other people’s bucket lists whose personalities and interests are like your beloved. It can give you ideas and inspire your imagination of what they might have put on their list.

In doing grief work through a bucket list, it is important to find some overlap in your desires. It needs to be resonant enough with your personality that it will foster enough desire and drive to help you to accomplish it.

For instance, Brian was always braver, in general, than I am. So, many of the things on his list require more raw courage than my own list. For instance, he always wanted to parasail again. I would NEVER put parasailing on my list. But, I can consider it and put it on my remembrance list because I might actually be able to find enough courage to do it. Desire is everything.

My world will be bigger by the act of doing his bucket list.