Hannah's Bucket List

This post is #45 in a year-long series ... Through this series of posts I plan to share our family's experiences during our 17-year-old daughter's year-long battle with brain cancer, which began in February of 2008. My desire is to process through the events of that year from the perspective that a decade of time has brought ... for myself, really. But if you'd like to follow along, you're welcome to join me.

Photo credit: rubyblossom. on Visual Hunt / CC BY-NC

Remember the movie "The Bucket List"? It was released in 2007, and Brad and I went to see it on a very rare date back when it was in theaters. Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson play a couple of mismatched strangers, each diagnosed with terminal cancer, who end up sharing a room in the hospital. Together, they come up with a list of things they want to do before they die, and escape from the cancer ward to fulfill their mission. I wanted to see this movie because I found the concept intriguing. Of course, when we went to see it, we had no idea that our oldest daughter would be diagnosed with a terminal illness just about a year later.

The other day, I caught the end of "The Bucket List" on TV, and it got me to thinking. If Hannah had made a bucket list, what would have been on it? We never discussed anything like that with her, because we really never discussed the possibility that she might die from her cancer. Not that she didn't know ... she was sitting right there when the doctor told the four of us that she had less than a 5% chance of survival ... but after that day, we really never talked about it. After all, we knew that God could still heal her, if He chose to do so.

We did meet with the Make-A-Wish people, and she was approved to have a wish fulfilled. So we spent some time discussing what her wish would be ... and she was torn between a Caribbean beach vacation, or an RV trip to Yellowstone. We had taken a family vacation to Yellowstone the summer before she got sick, and the girls had absolutely loved it there. And she and Bethany had always thought traveling in an RV would be the most fun thing ever. But ... she was adamant that she did not want to do either of these things until she was done with her treatments.  She did not want to go to the beach without hair, and she did not want to travel across the country feeling sick.  So, we told the Make-A-Wish people that we wanted to wait.  She never completed her treatments, so her Make-A-Wish was not fulfilled.

But as I thought about what Hannah might have put on a "bucket list", I couldn't come up with a thing.  She was not the adventuresome sort, so skydiving would definitely have been out of the question.  She had no burning desire to see the Egyptian pyramids or climb Mount Everest.  She was never one to seek attention and money wasn't important to her, so I don't think she would have sought fame or riches.

After all my thinking, I could only come up with two things that Hannah might have included on her "bucket list", and those would have been to spend as much time as possible with her family, and to bring God glory through her storm. And I receive a great deal of satisfaction and comfort from knowing that both of those items could be crossed off the list as fulfilled.  One of her favorite things to do was spend time with her extended family ... grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins.  And from the moment of her initial diagnosis up until the very end, she was surrounded by those she loved.  As for bringing God glory, we still see the evidence of that wish on a daily basis.

Thank you, Lord, for a fulfilled "bucket list"!