My husband died when he was young. I was young. Our children were too. It happened at Disneyland.
Not in a hospital room where you have time to prepare, not after a long illness where conversations happen slowly, but in the middle of a family trip that was supposed to be about making memories. One minute we were together, and the next, everything changed in a way I never saw coming. Life doesn’t gently shift in moments like that. It splits wide open. There is a before, and there is an after, and you don’t get a say in when that line is drawn.
And while you’re trying to process the shock, something else shows up almost immediately. Real life decisions that need to be made. Questions that need answers. Things you never talked about suddenly matter more than anything, and you find yourself trying to hold your emotions together while also trying to figure out everything that comes next. No one really talks about that part.
We talk about grief, but we don’t talk enough about the reality that comes with it. The practical side. The “what now” that shows up while you’re still trying to understand what just happened. And the truth is, most of us are not prepared. Not because we don’t care, but because we don’t want to go there. We tell ourselves we have time. We assume we’ll figure it out later. We avoid the conversations, the planning, the organization, because it feels uncomfortable or unnecessary or too far away to matter right now. Until it isn’t.
That experience changed the way I see everything. Not just loss, but life. Because when you’ve been forced into that kind of moment, you stop pretending that time is unlimited. You start paying attention to what actually matters, and how you’re really spending your time. You realize that living fully and planning responsibly are not opposites. They go together.
So, what did I learn from all of this? I learned that we spend a lot of our lives assuming we have more time than we do. We put things off, avoid conversations, tell ourselves we’ll get to it later, and keep moving like life is something we can circle back to when it’s more convenient. And then one day, it isn’t.
So, what I learned from that… I put in a book—Shit You Need to Do Before You Die. Not because I had everything figured out, but because I didn’t. But because I don’t want anyone else to feel as unprepared, as naive, or as completely lost as I did when it happened.
And here’s what I realized along the way—this doesn’t have to feel as heavy as we make it.
It doesn’t mean you need to sell all your belongings, move to another country, and reinvent your entire life by Tuesday. It just means maybe you start paying a little more attention. Maybe you write a few things down. Maybe you finally have the conversation you’ve been avoiding, or check one thing off that mental list you keep pushing to “someday.”
Maybe you make an actual bucket list… and not the kind that lives in your head while life quietly passes by.
Because this isn’t about fearing the end. It’s about not wasting the middle.
It’s about living your life fully, laughing a little more, saying what you mean, doing some of the things you keep putting off, and at the same time, handling your “stuff” so the people you love aren’t left trying to piece it all together without you.
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