The exercise seemed cathartic, meant to pull something far deeper than dreams from the participants. Create a bucket list. Easy enough I suppose, although not as easy as it might be to those with less distance left of the road.

But there was nothing I could think of, nothing worthy of such a contract with the universe. Surely, in putting words to paper, there becomes an invisible thread (a map) connecting now to the future, this to another.

There was nothing I needed to do.

Subsequent discussions debated the matter – a half empty bucket or a bucket half full.

Mine, admittedly, is a bucket overflowing – not big enough to hold what I already have, what I have already known. Even of my sorrows, I would not sacrifice a one for the preceding joy, negating a moment of anguish, loss or indecision.

It is the nothing (everything) variable of love. To love; to be loved. What else could there be? If I climbed Everest, what value those words on stone? Would that be the thing for which I would linger? A memory of sorts that speaks more to my endurance than to my endearing.

Nothing.

Nothing more than to love – to be loved. To empty the bucket time and again until there is no time….

Leaving behind only a bucket never (ever) quite emptied.

. . .