She believes that her husband has “given up” his cancer fight-a war she’d rather he still wage.
But there’s a downside to this end-of-life frivolity, which Virginia, Carter’s wife, brings to the forefront. They lunch on the top of one of the Great Pyramids, drive a motorcycle along the Great Wall of China and eat an exquisite dinner at an authentic French restaurant.Īll this gusto in the face of impending death is admirable in its own, cash-hemorrhaging way. And the two go on an around-the-world trip to see the earth’s most eye-popping sites. He forces Carter to go skydiving with him. In the words of former Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders, “We all will probably die of something sooner or later.” But what should we make of our time before we start pushing proverbial daisies? This question lies at the heart of The Bucket List.Įdward believes that dying people can still have fun, and he sets out to prove it. So, this is their last “shot,” Edward tells Carter. It’s not like he has any family to shower with gifts. So when he sees Carter scribbling out a “bucket list”-things Carter wanted to do before he died-Edward makes a few additions and pitches it to Carter as a final, globetrotting to-do list, one so stuffed with fun and frivolity that it might leave Paris Hilton winded. No-one gets a private room in one of these places, not even the hospital’s fabulously wealthy, cantankerous owner.īut Edward isn’t one to feel sorry for himself. He owns a whole chain of them, in fact, and up ’til now Edward operated them like warehouses stocked with bedpans, overworked doctors and terrible pea soup. Hospital roomie Edward Coles also is dying-an irony, considering he’s dying in his very own hospital.
“How long Carter Chambers has to live.” (Buzz!) He shouts out the answers at his tiny hospital television-hoping, perhaps, that Alex Trebek will hear him and allow him to participate in a “Daily Double.” He’s feeling useless and adrift and wishes his doting wife would just leave him alone so he can spend the rest of his life watching Jeopardy in peace. But the whole impending mortality thing is still a bit of a bummer. He has a doting wife, three successful children and a hospital wallpapered with get-well cards from the grandkids.
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