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February 10, 2008 |
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One Last To-do List
FOUND by Nathan Broom
in Louisville, Kentucky
My work involves material donations from hospitals. One batch included this note and several other personal items from a woman born in 1964. I called the hospital to see about returning these items and learned that she had left through the morgue. This was 2005, meaning she was 40 or 41 when she died.
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If You Tell Lies August 29, 2006 |
Dinosaur Poster August 20, 2007 |
Back OFF! November 03, 2007 |
George March 16, 2007 |
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We collect FOUND stuff: love letters, birthday cards, kids' homework,
to-do lists, ticket stubs, poetry on napkins, telephone bills, doodles -
anything that gives a glimpse into someone
else's life. Anything goes...
Great find, but it makes me sad.
I'm confused about.. things to do: a mother, 1 brother, 2 brothers.. cousins... are these their own relatives they plan to do.. or other peoples'?
I don't get 'sad' from this.. just.. confused.
my personal favourite, given the context, it "hang curtain".
well I guess that's kinda depressing.
that poor woman.
I hope she at least got to watch that movie.
Go the park?
Go the park to fish?
I would rather go the park for a picnic, myself...
Maybe this is like her tame, kind of boring but my life has been pretty satisfying, bucket list. I would like to cook a full meal one day before I die. I know...it was probably just a regular everyday to do list, but it's nice to think.
At first I really thought it said "place to CAT."
and some people I used to know used the word "cat" as a euphemism for .. vomiting. So that was really strange. This is a weird find.
The to-do lists go on, long after the memories are gone.
I'm gonna make a fantastic fake Last To Do List so everyone will think I was having too much fun to do laundry. 8-)
I had nothing whatsoever to do with those comments in the very weird place with the finder's statement on that Lisandra find. Just sayin'.
evil html begone!
Sand, I wish you'd find a new location, honey. How about in your shoes or in between your toes? Still irritating, but not so painful. Think about it.
Love, Mom
What the heck is the word before "friends"?
tonal? ton of?
I hate when sand gets all up in my business.
I think it says "To my" in front of friends. To my friends. So maybe she was going to write letters or cards or emails to her friends, cousins, brother, and mother.
i mean - to her friends, her cousin, her older and younger brothers (1 & 2) and her mother.
I think she knew she was going to die.
The people on the right are people she knew she needed to contact/reach out to first.
CHROME TOASTER, Shakespeare and the Elisabethans had the verb "to cat" to mean vomit, first, so obviously your friends loved Onkel Willy as much as I do...
"Cook a full meal" could well be the ambition of a dying person who loved creating and sharing delicious food, and hadn't been able to do that for a long time, whether because they were debilitated by illness (chemo?) or because the sight and smell of food produced unpleasant reactions due to their medication etc.
She wants her house left nice ("hang curtains") before she goes, but she also knows she wants some fun with those she loves.
Think I'll go make a list like this. Actually, we're doing some of it anyway.
I thought it said "place to cat" , too. But I thought maybe she meant "place THE cat" -like as in adoption or a shelter.
I think the list is great in its simplicity and motivated planning. How much more meaning this find has since it was found in a morgue, though.Her family members may want to have it but we never know who is going to find our stuff at any given time. I am so careul -especially with shopping lists-since I frequent this webiste.
she'd be the same age as me.
Sounds like this lady was making a list of things to do while she visited relatives. She also had a list of relatives she needed to visit while she was in town.
While she was there, she might as well do some housework for her aging mother. And that curtain really needed to be hung up.
I love how it's titled "Some Things to Do" as though it were a list she carried around in case she got bored. Upon deciding she had nothing better to do she could whip it out and decide it was an appropriate time to "hang curtain".
Or go to Church.
I bet that meal was really good.
Mom,
I've found a new home.
Sand
BTW this to do list should also serve as an understanding that life is short and you never know how long you have. Make the most of it. Between this find and Roxy from a couple of days ago I'm making changes for the better. Corny, I know but what can I say.
The way I read this is these are things she could do, or people she could call if she gets the urge to drink or do drugs.
It is sad when somebody dies so young.
Mom in Whitmore Lake, I read it exactly that way, too, that it was list of things to do when she got the urge to use.
This Find, with its story (and because my birth year is 1964, too!) is just another reminder that I need to tell people how I feel, and do what I need to do, because I may never get the opportunity again. I've been getting a lot of those messages from The Universe lately, so maybe I better pay attention.
I was pretty sure that the things to do were the left column, and the right column was the people to do them with. Clean up with mom, get one bro to help with laundry, eat with all her friends...
Makes sense, right?
I'm casting my vote for the urge to use crowd too.
I thought it said 'Tona', being the name of a special friend.
Very sad. Starts out as a list of perfectly ordinary things that need doing to keep up the appearance of a perfectly ordinary life, then the list of family/friends as she realizes she has to make a last contact with them before she gets suicidal? or too ill to cope?
Ouch.
Strange that they are '1 brother' and '2 brother' rather than having names... Part of the problem maybe.
Or perhaps that list was for making a will.
Be thankful we are all still alive and still here.
Having been surrounded most of my life by hardcore drug users, I also think this is a list of things to do instead of use. Things the rest of us do on a daily basis take work and planning for those who are used to just blacking it all out.
And I know a girl named Tona... who is big on opiates.
It's really the little things that make up a day.
Being in a rough patch right now, I think I better make a list.
This find didn't really interest me until I read that the maker of the list was in her early forties when she left this world. My Mom was 42 when she moved on to a better place and I've never really gotten over it,I was 17.
I just came home from #4 on the list: Go to a movie. It was "The Diving Bell and The Butterfly" which just puts this list in a whole new light.
Hey Old Guy, hang in there. Rough patches have a way of smoothing out.
Hugs to you, OhNonothertoo.
It looks like place to eat, not cat.
and, that makes much more sense.
Is the left column the stuff to do; and the right column the people needed to do it ... except that she didn't finish that column?
Clean house? Mother can do that.
Do laundry? My bro knows how.
Hang the curtain? That'll take both brothers.
Etc.
Etc.
I make these kinds of lists all of the time. I used to work for a library and I was always bored working on a Saturday because it was so slow. More often than not, I would make a list of stuff I would be doing if I weren't working or stuff that I would plan to do after work. I bet one of my lists gets 'found'. I bet she made this list while in the hospital because she was wishing she was elsewhere.
what seems especially poignant is that this is still a hopeful list, like any woman trying to get her life together would make. even at a place and time in her life - like the hospital, on her deathbed, she still had desires and was thinking of her loved ones.
i'm glad you shared this with us. i needed to see this.
i hope she got to do at least some of the things on her list! :(
A friend lost her mother last week from renal failure as a complication of diabetes. The doctors and family had met a few days before to tell her she couldn't continue dialysis - her cut-downs were all worn out and there was no place left to plug in. After the doctors had gone, my friend asked her mom if there was anything she'd especially like to eat, now that her diet would no longer make any difference. Her mom said, "Yes there is - pizza and Coke!" And so they sat together in her hospital bed eating hot slices from a cardboard box and slurping Coke from big plastic cups. They laughed and talked about ordinary things, things like the items on this list. It was the closest they had been for many months. Three days later her mom was dead.