The Bucket List Myth

by, Renee Wood

I originally named this blog site “Renee’s Ramblings” because when I started out 15 years ago I didn’t know what I would say, but it turned into anything but rambling. This time, though, it might be just that – a bunch of thoughts about my life right now.

After I finished my book the third week of June, not much has gone on in my life since. I am still a board member of the Ability Center, and a member of the Ohio Self-Determination Association (OSDA). Also, I was recently voted the Treasurer of the Supported Decision-Making Network of Ohio. It’s a small non-profit group just formed in Ohio to promote supported decision-making as an alternative to guardianship when someone may need some assistance in understanding information, or circumstances, in order to make an informed decision.

I also resigned from my job as an Ohio Tech Ambassador. An influencer can only tell their story so many times to the same audience, before they lose their influence! It was just time for me to move on to let the other people do the influencing – although the program was changing to teach other people how to tell their stories to influence, rather than really getting into the heart and soul of teaching people how to actually use technology, which is where I thought it should go. Teaching others to tell their story to influence is not a bad concept, but it’s not really teaching technology either. So it was just time for me to leave and let the program go in whatever way they want.

This got me thinking about elderly people, and what they look forward to after they retire. Or maybe more than that, how they are “viewed” by people after their working life is through. I purposely did not use the word “non-productive”, since for most retirees the day after they retire, are still capable of productivity, they just don’t have an avenue to channel it anymore. Involvement, especially in a career, is what American society bases someone’s ability and knowledge to be engaged in anything, even conversation. Being a young disabled person I may have been cast aside, but with youth you have the time to prove yourself. No, it’s not right to be cast aside due to disability, but at least you have time to grow and plan on how to get around these obstacles to become what you want to be.

Being a retired elderly person, with a list of lifelong proof of successes, this elderly person may be put at the top of the bookshelf as some kind of prized idol, but they are still gathering dust just the same as that young disabled person. In other words, every now and then some organization may seek out good knowledge for an hour’s talk to their organization, but after they are through with their talk, this elderly person is just sat back on the shelf to gather dust again, until the next person pulls them off the shelf months later, dusts them off, and sits them in front of an audience. Eventually these engagements are so few and far between that this elderly person is forgotten on the shelf.

This is not a pity-party for me, I’m just pointing out why elderly people are lonely and lose the abilities they do have. Society has at least attempted to solve this issue of loneliness and nothing to do among the elderly with what they call “Senior Centers”. My limited knowledge of the center is that they play cards, board games, and bingo. Maybe they have a jigsaw puzzle table that participants can work on together but that’s the extent of my knowledge of these centers where the elderly get together and fight loneliness.

Years ago, when my husband was in his seventies and lonely, I suggested that he go to one of these centers a couple of times a week. His response to me was, “That’s for old people”! My thought was, “Well, you are old”! I don’t know what he actually meant at the time, but in hindsight I realized that I probably had the wrong thought in assuming he should go to a place with people his own age to solve the problem of loneliness. If people with disabilities don’t want to be with only people with disabilities, then I guess most elderly people don’t want to be with all old people.

Additionally, a person goes from working in a corporate entity one day and relegated to playing “Go Fish” the next day? Nothing wrong with playing a good card game every once in a while with friends that you know, but when playing with a bunch of strangers your own age is about your only choice, then there is something desperately wrong with that solution. I am now wasting my brain power on solving crossword puzzles, rather than creating initiatives that will make life better for other people. If, out of boredom, I relegate myself to complete one more crossword puzzle on the computer, I am going to throw it out the window!

The “ideal” of retirement is not about, “Oh goody, I get to play childish games now”! It’s about doing what you want, when you want to do it. That doesn’t mean you don’t want a regular schedule of something meaningful to do that has purpose like a job, five to 15 hours a week. All that means is you don’t want to work a nine to five job. It just means that you’re not banking on a career anymore, so don’t want to put a lot of time into it, but just want to help out and have purpose and meaning.

Whoever created this idea of a “bucket list” for people who are about to “kick the bucket”, needs to go stick their head in one full of water! If I hear one more time in response to wanting something meaningful to do, “Well, work on your bucket list”, I am going to shit in a bucket, stick their head in it, and tell them to work on getting out of that!

Even the euphemism of “kick the bucket” comes from a horrible way pigs died by tying their feet up and hanging them by a rope and then kicking the bucket out from under them. This also could apply to the way they used to hang people by a noose and kick the bucket out from under them to cause their death. So why would we use in civil society a term like “bucket list” which was derived from “kick the bucket” where the person’s or animal’s death was purposely caused by literally kicking a bucket out from under them!? If someone was intentionally going to cause my death, do you think I would be thinking of a list of all the things I want to do? Hell no! I’d be thinking about a list of how I can get them not to intentionally cause my death. How did we ever equate causing intentional death, with a terminal illness? Just because you know when you’re going to die, doesn’t make it the same thing!

On top of that, one would have to assume that I have, or even want, a “bucket list”. And even if I have goals I wanted to accomplish before I left this “blue ball”, maybe I was a smart person and worked on it all my life, and got it done before the end. In my case, that’s exactly what happened. My book was the end of personal goals I desired to complete before my life ended. Honestly, I doubted I’d make that goal. And don’t go telling me to make new “goals” (bucket list) so you feel as if you offered something constructive – as if I couldn’t come up with that on my own. It’s just something easy to say so you don’t have to talk about the real issue! The issue of not having something meaningful to do in one’s life because they are old, retired and no one knows what to do with them now!

As is par for my life, it’s time for me to take what little control I have to solve my own problem of boredom and lack of purpose. What I came up with probably won’t solve the problem of not being involved in order to make change in people’s lives, but at least it might give me some constructive way of utilizing too much time on my hands. I decided to write one blog a week. However, the more I am left out of things the less I will have to write about. In order to write something people want to read one has to be engaged in life. At least I can do that for a while. But the less engaged I get from not being included, the less I will have to write.

Ideally, what would I like? A five to ten hour a week job that will help me engage in the community of disability. My goal would be to help people think about their own lives and where they want to go. To problem solve with them around the barriers that stand in their way. It would have to be a paying job otherwise there would be no constructive avenue to get this done, and to find the people who need this assistance. Yes, this is my ideal goal, but at least I could start with writing one blog a week. And if no one’s handing me a mic, I’ll write until they do.

So here I am—still alive, still thinking, still wanting to matter. I may not have a nine-to-five, but I have a lifetime of experience, insight, and fire that hasn’t gone out. If society doesn’t know what to do with people like me, then maybe it’s time we show them. One blog at a time, one conversation at a time, I’ll keep showing up. Because purpose doesn’t retire, and neither do I.