What Keeps Me Awake At Night- For Now

So many things keep me awake at night, but the latest comes after the *recent death of a colleague. I didn't know him very well (he had just started), but I was suddenly overcome with worry that he hadn't completed his life insurance sign up, or that he hadn't left a will for his children. This then led to me worrying about my own will and my own life insurance and creating a space in my head that made it impossible to sleep. Death, even of someone you are not close with, brings up our own mortality in different ways. My daughter, who is 14, told me she had written out a bucket list. I asked her if she knew what that meant. She replied, "It's a list of things I want to do." I told her that a bucket list was a list of things to do before you die. This confounded her. She wanted to know why it just couldn't be a list of things to do- why did it have to do with death? Isn't the point of making any list so that you could finish it while you were alive?

She has a point. Why does it have to be a bucket list? Why can't it just be a list? So I am starting one of my own, and here is the item at the top:

Spend time with my children- listening, asking questions, making them laugh, telling them stories and teaching them how to live.

   

*This post was originally written back in August 2014, but never posted.