My brother told me there was something I needed to see. I had no idea on that day six years ago that my whole life was about to change. Dave handed me three creased pages scrawled with familiar handwriting—our dad’s—titled “Things I would like to do in my lifetime!” Dad had died in a car crash 13 years earlier. Dave said he’d found the list in a small pouch when he was moving into his new house.
There wasn’t a date on the list, but my mother later told me my dad wrote it in 1978. The year I was born. Dad was just 29 then. My eyes flew down the list of 60 items. Dad had checked off a few—“be
