Alice's Bucket List

Yesterday I discovered Alice's Bucket List, the new blog by a 15-year-old girl in the UK who knows she is going to die very young from a cancer she's been fighting since she was 11. She's got two posts so far, and one of them is her bucket list. Imagine being that young and knowing it was time to think about what experiences you want to cram in before you get very very ill and die. Imagine being the parent of a kid in this situation. It's too much to even try to process.

I have said before that while losing my dad has been awful, I don't regard it as a tragedy. The story of Alice is a tragedy of the highest order.

Her list is sweet and simple, and much of it seems within her grasp. Most heart-breaking are the few items she acknowledges it's already too late for her to ever have or do. My first thought on reading the list - and yours will be, too - was to think about whether I could have anything to do with helping Alice get anything on the list. It's not likely, because she lives in the UK, and it really isn't that kind of list. But one thing she is asking is that everyone sign up to become a bone marrow donor.

I'll be honest, I'm not sure I have the nerve. But part of that is because there is so much blather out there about the process of donating bone marrow. So I've decided that if nothing else, I will learn as much as I can about it, and I hope you will, too. It may not be for me, it may not be for you, but we owe it to Alice to at least find out for sure. Here are FAQs about the whole process from the National Marrow Donor Program.