The Privilege of Preparing For Death

33 year old Rowena Darby has already written out a card for all of her son’s future birthdays and Christmases, his graduation and for his wedding.

She has terminal cancer, and said that she has no interest in creating a bucket list of things to achieve before she dies; she just wants to be a good mum to her son Freddie.

Rowena was bored in hospital whilst having her treatment, so went to a craft fair with her mum. She ended up buying a kit and making bracelets which she now sells for £10 apiece to save money to take her son on holiday. She then started to make all of the cards, which span right through all of his future birthdays and Christmases and even include his future wedding and graduation. She is also planning to compile a book of all the emails she has written to him.

Rowena has a very humbling view on her terminal diagnosis. “I’m privileged that I can prepare for my death - if I was in a car crash there would be none of these memories for Freddie.

“When I die it’s going to be awful for my family but at least they know it’s going to happen and because of this we’ve had the best quality time together beforehand.

“I know a lot of people in my situation create a bucket list but I just want to be a mum and do normal stuff with my son.

“There is nowhere I want to go - I just want to have a normal life with no regrets.”

Her view that she is privileged to be able to prepare for her own death is extremely inspiring. Part of our project is to encourage people to realise that we are all going to die and that we should all be preparing for death; but preparing for a death that one knows is imminent is a very different experience.

If you received a terminal diagnosis, how would you prepare for your death? Would you want to cross off the items on your bucket list, prepare your family for a future without you like Rowena, or something else all together? Let us know on Facebook, Twitter or email us.

"Death is a Graduation"

It is with a heavy heart that I (Lucy) am writing this blog to tell you that I am leaving The Bucket Project.

Not because I particularly want to, or because I found something better, may I hasten to add! 

I absolutely love this project and I love my job, so it feels a bit counterintuitive to have to leave so soon, but an opportunity cropped up that I just could not refuse. I have wanted to be a teacher for many years, but haven't felt quite ready or confident enough to go for it in the past. I have blossomed quite a bit in my short but sweet period of time with the Bucket Project, which in turn gave me the confidence to apply for teaching one last time. I was offered a place to start this September, and after much deliberation I decided to go for it. I've got a place at Edge Hill University to do a Primary PGCE specialising in English. I'm also hoping to incorporate music in there somehow too as I'm a musician and music graduate, so I'd like to be that crazy teacher who does ukulele maths games and makes the kids sing their spellings!

If there's one thing working for this project has taught me, it's that you're never too young to make the most of life. Our project advocates planning for your death, but I also think we advocate planning for your life too - go and tick off that bucket list of yours! That's what I'm going to do. I would have loved to stay longer and perhaps put my teaching off until next year, but it was one of those things where if I didn't do it now, my courage might have disappeared again. I've always liked the above Elisabeth Kubler-Ross quote, and thought it was quite apt considering this time next year I will be hopefully be graduating again!

It means that my job is now available to apply for. If you are looking for an administrative post with a rather large dash of creativity involved, this may be for you! You can view the job online on Marie Curie's recruitment website. Since I've been here, I've set up this blog and tried to build up our social networking engagement, so it would be fabulous if the person who replaced me could carry that on and improve it even more. There are also lots of projects and events coming up to plan, so there's lots of fun to be had too. It's a fantastic job, a very worthwhile project and a lovely work environment - I couldn't recommend it enough.

I'm here until the end of August, so there will be a few more blog posts and suchlike from me until I take myself off to learn how to teach little people!