A mother is only as happy as her unhappiest child.

This saying, and a blog I read recently with a bucket list longer than I have ever seen has led me to think about happiness and bucket lists. I wondered if I’d have enough time to do all the things on this bloggers list, or if I’d even want to, or if I did, whether it would make me happy! I’ve always made lists and had dreams, some wilder than most of you would believe, including living in Italy and Africa for long enough to have called them home, and opening and funding a restaurant or cafe similar to one I used to frequent about 30 years ago called The Abode of the Friendly Toad, to feed the homeless. Mostly though, my bucket list has been for things less tangible, simple things like forgiveness and inner happiness. These it appears, are the hardest to achieve of all. Many of my dreams – things on what could have been called a bucket list – have been realised, the tangible ones like going to university and running a function centre, and the less tangible ones like being happy and at peace with myself and the world. Since being diagnosed with dementia, the less tangible ones are mostly what now matter to me, and I feel mildly inspired to now write my first ever Bucket List!

So these are a few things on my unofficial bucket list that I really want:

• My kids to be emotionally and physically happy and healthy
• My kids to be financially and emotionally independent
• To  spend more time with them, my husband, my parents and my special friends
• To be a nice person
• Love, laugh, and cry more often
• Euthanasia to at least come onto the agenda in Australia (sorry to those of you who don’t agree with it, but that is also your choice)
• To set up a restaurant/cafe where meals are organic and free to those who can’t  afford them, or people pay what they can
• To provide a Christmas lunch every year for The Big Issue vendors in Adelaide who may have no family or friends to share it with

When I watched the movie called The Bucket List with Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson in it, I felt desperately sad for Morgan’s family, not because he was dying, but because he chose to spend his last weeks with a stranger. I understand fully the need to hang out with people who are going through the same experience as you, especially if it is very traumatic; this is why grief support groups work so well. But at what cost to you personally, and to your loved ones? When you are facing death, your loved ones usually want [need] to be with you, and at the end, I have heard so many dying people say they wished they had spent more quality time with their family and loved ones. Perhaps the Bucket List is another sign of how selfish and self-indulgent we have become as a society? I’m not even sure about writing this list, but do hope I can achieve most of them, especially the first few.