My Bucket List

We talk a lot about death without mentioning the word death. Maybe we imagine him a person who will come right away whenever his name is called. We have dozens of expressions for people who died and are dying and will die, but the word death is almost never mentioned.

Americans also have this bad habit. They mention "the deceased" and those who are going to "pass away", talk how they may not still "be around" some time. They "sacrifice" animals in scientific experiments and if their pet is very sick they may have to "put him to sleep". People "lose battles" with diseases. Murder, assassination, abortion, execution, euthanasia, doom, fatality, mortality.... all these are expressions of death.

And there's another one... kicking the bucket. The movie The Bucket List talks about two men with a terminal illness. They made a list of things they always wanted to do but couldn't get to. They called this list the Bucket List and they started trying to do whatever time allowed them before "kicking the bucket".

Before I traveled to the US, I made my own bucket list. I was leaving almost my entire extended family of hundreds of people behind for a minimum of five years (now it's longer), and because of very tough visa regulations I knew that I wouldn't be able to return home during this period. I made this bucket list in my mind which was a little different from the one in the movie since I wasn't expecting to "be with the Lord" anytime soon. It was of those people close to me whom I expected to die while I was away, a list of those who I won't be able to lay eyes on before they die. The smiling I-am-traveling-for-a-bit was actually the very last goodbye I said to many of them.

My Bucket List was a bad one. It just taught me a good lesson: death is highly unpredictable. It picks people when you least expect it. It takes away the most charming and the most alive. It chases those who are very optimistic of life, telling them they shouldn't have placed so much hope in something they were not going to enjoy for too long. When disease struck they fought it with every breath they took because they could not take their next breath for granted, then eventually dying before they could start living.

When I knew the end was coming, I would call very formally wishing them the best of luck, and a speedy a recovery from this although I knew they would not recover. They also knew they wouldn't but we won't talk about it. I wished I could tell them that it was great knowing them and that I was proud to be in the same family with them, but I couldn't. I wish I would be able to tell them to cheer up since death may be the end of one life but the beginning of another better one, that it probably looks better on the other side, that death ends lives but not relationships, and ask them to save me a seat up there, but I couldn't. At the end I would just tell them to hopefully see you if I visit Jordan next year, inshalla- inshalla, and I knew I wouldn't, and they knew they wouldn't.

I decided to mentally burn my bucket list. I should have never made it. I don't want anyone to be on it and I don't want to be on anyone's list! Death is too big to be placed on lists.