EDITOR’S NOTE: Grieving the death of a pet hits people hard. For some, I think it hits harder than losing a human relative. If you are interested in talking about the loss of a pet for a future edition, please share some details at the form I just linked.
Justin Zackham is to blame. Well, not really to blame so much as it was his idea in the first place.
The story goes that Zackham, a screenwriter and producer, coined the phrase “Bucket List” when he created his “List of Things to Do Before I Kick the Bucket.” His first item was to make a major Hollywood motion picture. Admirable, because he actually did it.
Rob Reiner took his screenplay and fashioned it into the 2007 buddy comedy The Bucket List, starring Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson as two men living with terminal cancer that go off on the adventure of a lifetime, ticking off all of the things they wanted to do before dying. An inspirational tale directed at the irredeemable hearts of Baby Boomers everywhere.
It was critically panned — Roger Ebert gives a masterclass in shitting on a film with his review — but it was successful financially because Rob Reiner knows how to make a movie that will part middle-aged people from their money. This too is admirable.
Anyhow, I’m not hear to crab about a movie I don’t ever plan to watch.
Soon after this film debuted, you started seeing stories on the morning shows and clickbaity stories online about making your own bucket list and trips you should put on your bucket list. It started off innocently enough, but soon the bucket list lost its meaning. Climbing to the top of Mount Everest, skydiving or learning to fly a plane gave way to the ordinary. Troll around your Facebook and you will find friends who have seasonal bucket lists; before the end of the summer I want to go to the beach or before winter is over I want to go skiing. Not before they die, but before Labor Day.
Those grand plans of scaling the Himalayas or seeing the Wonders of the World became bucket list vacations you take with your kids during the summer to amusement parks. Rather than call it a “list of shit I want to do this summer,” it gets misnamed a bucket list.
I mean, I have a list of shit I want to do this summer:
See a Billy Joel concert (tickets have been purchased)
Have dinner somewhere in Manhattan that I haven’t been (which is where I’m seeing the Billy Joel concert)
Go to Virginia Beach with my college friends (booked long ago)
Spend an entire weekend doing nothing but sitting in or near my pool (lofty but attainable)
Eat dinner at Eden (one of my favorite restaurants in Syracuse)
Are these bucket list worthy? Maybe if you’ve never been to New York City and you wanted to cross it off a list, sure. I’m lucky in that I can drive there in five hours12. But, that’s not what the bucket list is about.
Zackham’s bucket list and, by extension, film takes the topic of this very specific list and looks at it through the lens of the things that would complete your life. If you knew that you were going to die next week or next month, what are the things you would want to experience so that you could die fulfilled and know that there was nothing you didn’t do before sailing off into the mystic? What have you denied yourself throughout the course of your life because for practical purposes that you would do impulsively if you were running out of time?
Go back and read that a couple of times because the more you think about it, the weightier it seems. There is desperation in this idea. It’s certainly quite morbid. It forces you to look at your life through a most critical lens, finding the deficiencies and seeking ways to solve them so you can leave this mortal plane content.
Ebert, who had his jaw removed as part of his cancer treatment, took the film as personally as I (apparently) take the bastardization of the phrase:
"The Bucket List" is a movie about two old codgers who are nothing like people, both suffering from cancer that is nothing like cancer, and setting off on adventures that are nothing like possible.
I've never had chemo, as Edward and Carter must endure, but I have had cancer, and believe me, during convalescence after surgery the last item on your bucket list is climbing a Himalaya. Your list is more likely to be topped by keeping down a full meal, having a triumphant bowel movement, keeping your energy up in the afternoon, letting your loved ones know you love them, and convincing the doc your reports of pain are real and not merely disguising your desire to become a drug addict.
This gets me going on another topic: making memories. Again, doom scroll your Facebook feed after a school break. You will no doubt find posts full of photos from your friends who took their family on vacation somewhere to “make memories.” (Sometimes it’s a “bucket list” trip as well.)
This same person will at some point, on social media or in conversation, will passive-aggressively complain that they’re always involved with arranging or driving to sort of activity with their kid(s)3. What your friend doesn’t connect is that these two things are connected and of their own making.
Detour…
Allow me to go on a short tangent.
We took our oldest to Disney World in 2016.4 Was it miserable? Yes! Was it expensive? HELL YES! Did she have fun? YES! Did we make memories? Yes! Did we go to Disney World with the express intent of making memories? NO!
We went because it was time. My wife and I are pragmatists to our rotten cores and we felt like the Disney magic — not unlike the tooth fairy or Santa Claus — runs out at a particular age. Our oldest was six and we thought that was the sweet spot. She was old enough to not need a nap, she didn’t need a stroller or to be carried, and she could clearly tell us if she was tired, hungry, etc.
We went to introduce our daughter to a cultural touchstone that held important meaning in both of our lives.5
(It was also because I had a very generous aunt who was very insistent on taking my daughter to Disney World as a rite of childhood passage. She was floating the hotel room and park tickets, so we tried to set our boundaries on when we felt it was best for all of us.)
The best memories happen organically. They aren’t staged or forced. They’re spontaneous. They’re shared. My daughter still talks about the pool at Disney’s Beach Club resort — a sand-bottomed behemoth — where we spent more time than the parks. She has better recall of that than anything in the parks. I have distinct memories of each time my aunt took me to Disney, like playing video games with my cousins at the arcade in the Contemporary until closing, the old Communicore exhibits at Epcot, and waking up to peacocks walking around our deck at our Treehouse Villa.
Back to our regularly scheduled programming…
Our current societal construct is one where everything has to be important. Everything has to offer stimulus. Everyone has must be influenced or be an influencer. No one is content to simply experience something in the moment and be present. It has to accomplish something. It has to make a memory. It has to be crossed off a bucket list.
Don’t believe me? Think about the last time you went to a concert. How many people around you held up their cell phones to capture grainy video and distorted audio? How many of you just watched the solar eclipse in April without holding your phone up to take photos? Think about the barrage of fireworks photos from 4th of July displays that you will encounter in a couple of weeks.
And why? Because we don’t allow ourselves to enjoy anything anymore. It’s not about sharing or being social — the original intent of social media platforms — but about passively aggressively showing everyone what you are doing that they aren’t.6 The memories that they’re making, rather than just letting the memories be made.
For the record, I don’t have a bucket list. Sure, there are big things I want to do — eat and drink my way through Europe, drive across North America, get a byline in The New York Times, to name a few. But, if I kicked the bucket tomorrow, would I feel as if my life was incomplete? Not in the least bit7.
I married the woman I love. We have two children who have — by and large — brought us happiness. I’ve experienced so many things that others haven’t from my days in college athletics8 and the generosity of others. I feel pretty good about it all.
Material items and manufactured experiences don’t feed the flames of fulfillment. They may change the color of the fire or the scent of the smoke, but your true bucket list comes from a place within and your memories are made by you being there.
Final thoughts on finality…
“Bucket lists tie the value of our dreams to our value as individuals. Once we cut that tie, we can still appreciate the value of our abandoned goals by finding pleasure in the achievements of others.”
— Valerie Tiberius for The Washington Post
Dirt Nap is the Substack newsletter about death, grief and dying that is written and edited by Jared Paventi. It’s published every Friday morning. Dirt Nap is free and we simply ask that you subscribe and/or share with others.
We are always looking for contributors and story ideas. Drop a line at jaredpaventi@substack.com.
I’m all over social media if you want to chat. Find me on Facebook, Twitter/X, LinkedIn, and Bluesky. I’m on Threads and Instagram at @jaredpaventi.
If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or chat live at 988lifeline.org. For additional mental health resources, visit our list.
I’m also fortunate in that I’ve been to nearly every major city in the United States with the exception of Detroit (airport only), St. Louis, Baltimore (drove through it once around 4 a.m.), Houston, Miami, Denver, Minneapolis (airport only), and Seattle. I don’t consider myself less of a person for never having visited these places.
Five hours is an average to the Lincoln Tunnel. I’ve done it faster and I’ve spent hours sitting on I-80 because of a NJ Transit train fire or jackknifed tractor-trailer plus rubbernecking.
Usually a sporting event or travel team. Dirt Nap is not the forum for this level of discussion, but I hate to break it to you all: travel teams are a scam. I bet you a beer that your kid is not good enough at their sport to get an athletic scholarship. Whatever promise that was made to you was a lie.
The link takes you to my story that was published at the old, old Deadspin. It was my first published piece there and maybe, just maybe, getting published at Deadspin would be considered a bucket list item for me.
Our opinions on Disney have soured. Too many people have come back from the Happiest Place on Earth post-pandemic to say that the Disney experience has become a nakedly obvious cash grab — as opposed to a garden variety cash grab — down to the way you end up paying above and beyond your ticket price to ride specific rides, as if the ticket wasn’t enough. My youngest doesn’t know what she doesn’t know and hopefully won’t feel as if her childhood is incomplete when we don’t take care.
My wife and I conducted a social experiment with our second child. We didn’t mention word one about her pregnancy on Facebook until the day she was born in 2017. Our family knew. Obviously my wife’s co-workers did, but only four people in my office of 25 knew in advance. You know what happened? There were people who were actually mad that we didn’t share it in advance. And, there were a whole bunch of people who couldn’t believe that we could keep that news offline for that length of time.
Not to be pedantic, but I’d be dead and not feeling much in the way of anything.
I was once Dick Vitale’s driver for a day. I also once peed at the urinal next to former Duke University basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski. Same level of fulfillment and, no, I didn’t look.
I believe social media would be invaluable towards mental health if people actually started posting what made them miserable in addition to the “look at me!” Junk.
Post the arguments with your wife that start at “What are we having for dinner?” and invariably lead to “You ruined my life and I slept with your best friend!”
Post video of your child melting down while melting down in a 114 degree Disney raging inferno of a park day.
Post how you were driving down the road and felt like taking a 90 degree turn down the embankment.
We can all associate. And realize we aren’t alone. Nobody has a perfect life.
Or to summarize from Dr. Denis Leary: “Happiness comes in small doses folks. It's a cigarette butt, or a chocolate chip cookie or a five second orgasm. You come, you smoke the butt you eat the cookie you go to sleep wake up and go back to fucking work the next morning, THAT'S IT! End of fucking list!”
This is also why I hate the song "Live Like You Were Dying" by Tim McGraw.