Story XXII: Bucket List

A husband plans his retirement.

As I write this, it’s January 1st, 2026. Valerie and I are coming off the holidays and getting ready to get back to work, but looming life goals emerged in the vacation downtime.

As we close in on retirement, we’ve begun to identify the have-tos and the nice-to-haves for our next and final stage of life. Both our shared and personal lists have turned out to be short and manageable. We’re surprised by the simplicity and the nuts and bolts of what a happy life means for each of us.

Even my bucket list nice-to-haves are doable. I’m going to jump out of a plane with my son in Moab in September. I’m starting to second-guess this one, but the two of us have already requested the days off. An open plane door is coming.

I’m going to buy another convertible like the one I owned in Chicago. I used to love to drive with the top down, even in the rain. When I went fast enough, the rain blew over the top of the car. I would blast the heater. Those rides reminded me of my late father and his own convertibles. This affection for the top down was a stealth gift.

Travel will be central to our retirement.

Valerie and I will see the Pyramids, Japan for the countryside and its coastal towns. I have no doubt she will say the fishing villages look like she’d always pictured. Ireland’s on the list. Dublin. Pubs, of course. Van Morrison songs somehow.

We will talk about Ireland often, but we will never make it.

*

We will see the Taj Mahal. We’ll stand at the end of that long pool of water that leads up to it and take pictures of the reflection.

We’ll arrive early that morning to beat the heat. A German couple with two children will take a minute to clear the frame, but we’ll get the shot we came for.

*

We will have built our list as a team, like so much of our marriage. In retirement, we will have lived in or near cities for so long, we will have rarely seen the stars, not in a “you have to come out and see them” way.

We wanted that and will have it.

We will live in rural France, in a small town where you can walk to the shops easily. Our home’s location and its one-story height will factor in age and the survivor of the first death.

Purchasing our home in France will be difficult and lengthy, but sensible.

What won’t be sensible is buying the pied-à-terre in Paris. We will often take the train from our home in the Dordogne, then into Bordeaux, and northeast into Paris. We will tell friends with casual pride that we make our trips to Paris in under five hours.

“Heading in to Paris” is an impulsive decision we can decide over morning coffee, we will say, because we don’t work anymore. These conversations will be our retirement.

*

One item will have always been a “have-to.”

It’s one of mine, the simplest, most personal wish. If everything else went wrong, I insist on this.

We’re going to have a dog. I’ve never had a dog. So, of course, we’ll never have had a dog together.

We’ll spend a great deal of time talking about what breed it is going to be, and which dogs might be available in France when we get there. But in the end, I’ll stop into a dog shelter impulsively. It will be the same week we’re supposed to pick up the one we had a deposit on.

I will bring home a small mutt of a dog. A boy.

It will be May 13th.

The unilateral move on my part and the sacrificed down payment for a dog we picked together will trigger a memorable argument. Valerie will let me know the night we bring him home that we’re not going to pay for outrageous medical bills. It will be a counter strike.

But that evening, we will make peace before we release the puppy from his crate in the kitchen and eventually into the house. As he discovers our home, we will walk behind him together.

For a week we won’t have a name for him, but he will already have selected me. I will be his “One.” He will start to follow me from room to room and wait for me outside of doors.

The week we name him, we’ll have seen a terrible film in a local theater subtitled from English. The main character will have kept repeating “Lordy.” This will become a joke on the walk home.

That second week, Valerie will lean into the bathroom and tell me, “Lordy needs to use the bathroom.”

I will end up calling him “Lord.”

Lord will not train quickly.

Valerie, who almost never swears, will say, and this will become a family joke, “Your Lord took a shit on the living room carpet.”

I won’t have taken him out when I should have. I will still be learning, too. That joke will get us through the destruction of Valerie’s carpet.

*

That first year, the kids will come for Christmas, and our four grandchildren will get Lord completely worked up. On Christmas Eve, Ellie, the oldest, who was adopted when my daughter thought they wouldn’t have their own child, will be the ringleader.

I will lose my temper and shout at Ellie, who will burst into tears. This will lead to me falling out with my daughter. I will apologize to her during a walk into town, but it will be too late to fix in one visit. “My patience isn’t what it was,” I will argue.

For some reason that I’ll live to regret, I will tell her that Ellie is my favorite. This will be true. My daughter will not look at me, and I’ll wonder for years if I shouldn’t have said that. I will always remember she was folding up Ryan’s stroller.

*

When Lord is eight, he’ll start having bladder control problems. It will surprise us that this causes him to limp. He will require unplanned surgery. The cost will be a shock. In U.S. dollars, it will be almost $14K. We’ll still spend it. Neither of us will mention the agreement we settled on the night we brought him home. It will be unthinkable for either of us to have it otherwise.

After surgery, Lord will need a month of crate rest. He will hate the confinement, but I’ll bring his cage in the living room and place it on the carpet by my main chair. Valerie won’t say anything about the carpet.

*

Ellie will be ten.

When she visits, she’ll start walking with me into town along a particularly tight stretch of road. I will let her take Lord’s leash from time to time, while I keep an eye out for cars.

In the town’s small square, chatty groups of older men in the cafes will offer Lord small bits of snacks off their tables. They cannot resist a dog or a shy American girl, and they will speak to Ellie in French. She won’t understand anything other than “Bonjour,” so she’ll say “Bonjour” back before getting stuck in a one-way rush of conversation. They’ll laugh at her good-naturedly, but she will be quiet on the way back.

Our conversations on these walks will mean a great deal to me. Ellie will trust me with a secret from time to time, and I will honor my promise.

In turn, I will trust her with a request.

*

Two years later, at Thanksgiving, I will come down with what appears at first to be a bad flu. I will die the week between Christmas and New Year’s. A day after returning to the States from our home, our children will immediately fly back to France for the service, which will be held on the 3^rd.

It will be difficult to find a pastor locally who speaks English well enough for the majority English-only speakers at the funeral. My daughter will manage this for Valerie.

During a toast at the reception, my son will name all fifty-eight people and take a moment to thank each of them individually for traveling so far.

That evening, Ellie will ask to walk Lord into town. This will be the first time she’s walked him alone. My wife and daughter will agree to this.

After the children return to America, Valerie will begin to walk him regularly.

She will have to.

This is extremely important. She needs to walk him.

*

The wife at the épicerie will hold up the line to pet Lord. She’ll call him “Seigneur,” and when Valerie doesn’t bring him by the store, the wife will pretend to scold her and include a secret treat in Valerie’s shopping bag. It will become their joke.

*

Ellie will start sending Valerie cards on May 13^th every year. She will continue this for another seven years.

Ellie will take French her freshman year of high school. That same year, she’ll send Valerie a card with a dog that bears an uncanny resemblance to Lord. Inside the card, she’ll write a note in French, “Maintenant, Mamie est ‘l’Unique' de Lord et Lord est ‘l’Unique’ de Mamie.”

“Now, Grandma is Lord’s ‘One’ and Lord is Grandma’s ‘One’.”

Ellie’s card will sit on a small shelf over the sink in the Paris pied-à-terre, next to a picture of Lord and me. In the photo, Lord lies in his cage in the living room. I am sitting in my chair reaching through the cage grating to pet him. You can’t see my face, but you can see my hand. Lord’s face is pressed into my fingers. I will never know Valerie took this picture.

After my son and daughter sell the pied-à-terre, the card will sit on Ellie’s college dorm room desk, across the room from a roommate’s poster of the Taj Mahal.

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