the Bucket List

Well Kelly and I finally rented the Bucket List last night...

a great story... and one of those that you are glad you saw in the comfort of your own home, so only those closest to you could see you bawl like a small infant!

We really enjoyed it... Nicholson and Freeman were very good in their roles as two recently diagnosed cancer patients who decide they will forgo further torturous chemotherapy treatment... they decide instead to make a list of everything they wanted to see and do before they 'kick the bucket' - hence the title.

It is a very intriguing idea.

When Mom was diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic adenocarcenoma (if I live to be 150 years old, I will NEVER forget those fancy $5 words for 'lung cancer'), she and Dad decided to fight it. Most of us would likely make the same decision given similar circumstances... hindsight being 20/20, I think all of us wish she had been able to do what these two guys did.

I mean, she had 10 pretty good months... if you count as 'good' the routine chemotherapy treatments which poisoned her body and took her hair ...and the radiation treatments that stole her ability to taste food... if you count as 'good' the vomiting and general nausea that became a daily reminder of her disease - or more accurately, the cure for her disease...

if you count as good the daily shark cartilage milk shakes (I'm not making this up... though now it sounds like a punchline to a bad Saturday Night Live skit with Dan Akroyd and the 'RonCo Bass-o-matic') which tasted as good as they sound... if you count as good being finally so weak she became wheelchair-, then bed-bound...

I dunno... I honestly don't know which was worse: her illness or the treatment. Of course, it helps us sleep better at night to say that 'she would have felt MUCH worse if not for the treatment'...

Oh well... sorry for the digression. I guess I didn't know the movie brought up so many old, deep feelings...

but it makes me wonder (and I know it's easy for me to say this right now...) but I wonder sometimes...

if death is the door to Heaven... if dying is the path to eternal joy and forever being with Jesus... it sure seems that we Christians fight like hell to avoid it. I guess God placed this intense and instinctive 'will to live' inside us all...

OK, this started out as a flippin' movie review... and took a real dark turn toward introspection... sorry for that! :-)

truly, I don't know how I will face my own end here.

...but at least a part of me wants to believe I will embrace it and welcome it and, well, make my own bucket list.