Daughter fills bucket list from father who died 19 years ago

USA

“Meet the President, write to the Pope” – Laura works through her father’s bucket list

19 years ago, Laura Carney’s father was killed by a distracted driver. He left a list of things he wanted to achieve in life – his daughter has now completed it.

publishedFebruary 26, 2023 at 9:30 p.m

The death of her father, who was killed in a traffic accident by a careless driver, was a life-changing experience for Laura Carney.

Facebook/Laura Carney

• Mick Carney really wanted to skydive and correspond with the Pope at least once in his life.

• But 19 years ago he died in a traffic accident at the age of 54.

• Now Laura Carney has fulfilled all her father’s last wishes.

Laura Carney’s father, Michael “Mick” Carney, died at the age of 54 in a crash caused by a careless driver. This left a deep void in the lives of Laura and her brother David, who grew up in Limerick, Pennsylvania. Daughter Laura was 25 years old when her father died.

13 years later, Laura found a tattered letter in the Her father’s belongings, which turned out to be a bucket list. Laura’s husband Steven Seighman told The Washington Post: “She wanted to find a way to understand her father a little better. When we saw the list, it was immediately clear: This is it.”

Processing the bucket list took almost 6 years

According to Carney, the list was made in 1978, the year of her birth. It contained 60 activities, five of which had already been completed.

Laura set out to complete the 54 tasks and embarked on a journey to learn more about her father. On December 27, 2022, five years and eleven months after discovering the list, she was finally able to tick off the last item. She told the Washington Post: “It was one thing I had to do to get back in touch with the real me. I still carried that heartache and that trauma with me.”

City breaks and own watermelons

The list, headed “Things I would like to do in my lifetime,” includes simple tasks like “swim a river” and “grow a watermelon” – but there are also various tough nuts, such as “correspond with the Pope” and ” be invited to a political congress». A few travel destinations are also included, including cities like New Orleans, San Diego, Las Vegas, Chicago, Paris, London and Vienna. Some points on the list seemed almost impossible at first – but Laura didn’t give up.

Carney, who works as a freelance writer and editor, saw the Bucket List an unexpected way to process their grief and to get closer to her father again. She initially set herself a time frame of four years, but her vacation plans were thrown back by two years due to the corona pandemic.

Meeting with ex-President Jimmy Carter

She had previously signed up for a marathon in order to cross the “run ten miles straight” item from her list. Another task she fulfilled early on was a conversation with the President. That’s how Carney found out that Jimmy Carter, who was president at the time her father compiled the list, was performing in the state of Georgia. Without further ado, she boarded a plane to meet Carter.

Although Carney did some of the work himself, including a two-week vacation in Europe, “I didn’t feel like I was doing things alone,” the platform upworthy writes. She always felt her father’s presence.

Completing the list allowed Carney to get to know her father in a way she never expected. “Those were his goals and dreams. It helped me to understand him better, to see him as a whole person and not just as my embarrassing father. And that helped me understand myself,” she said. “Until I found the list, I thought I was more like my mother. As I worked down the list, these parts of me emerged that were very similar to him.”

While in German the sloppy expression “giving up the spoon” is used as a synonym for death, the proverb “to kick the bucket” (kick the bucket) is common in English. So the bucket list includes things that you would like to have experienced before you die. A possible German equivalent would be a “Löffelliste” – but the expression is only used very rarely.

With the daily update you stay informed about your favorite topics and don’t miss any more news about current world events.
Receive the most important information directly in your mailbox every day.

View Comments