Hello everyone! This is research for my new story. Due to certain circumstances the main character only has a short amount of time left to live. Therefore, he wants to make the most of it. So, I was wondering what you guys would do if you had only a short while left. Perhaps things other than the obvious, spend time with family and friends etc. I wanted to make it something personal to the character but then wondered if that may seem too 'fault in our stars' esque. Regardless, I look forward to reading your contributions. Thank you!
Well I certainly wouldn't spend it making worthless observations about basketball and scrambled eggs It should definitely be something personal to your character. Who are they as a person? Would they rather spend it completing a "bucket list", or spending as time with loved ones as possible? That's something I can't really decide for you.
I like the bucket list idea that @terobi mentioned. Send them off doing the things they have always wanted to do, but never got around to doing.
Yeah, I think it would less about going off on a holiday or whatever, more about fighting your personal demons and such. Also, honestly? Lotsa sex, if I can.
Spend what time I have left with my husband and family. I don't really have a bucket list. I've lived. I've seen. I've been. I've done.
Still cool. Just less flashy. Do you have any idea what you might say or do with them? Perhaps a little speech for your husband or something?
No, no speeches. Just be with them. I live in the kind of location that many think of as a vacation destination. We have beautiful beaches, mountains, jungles, waterfalls... I have a nice place on the top of a mountain out in the country, big piece of land. The view is jaw-dropping. I would spend time just being me being with them.
Moping round the house with a morphine bottle, MC wears his dressing gown, his drip on a pole... 'When you gonna run that marathon, eh? Answer me you bitch. The orgy, the bungee-jump, mescaline, bestiality. Can you afford to deny yourself experience?' 'But honey, I just want to spend quality time with you.' 'Selfish, so selfish, selfish, selfish, selfish.' 'There's a yoga documentary on Four?' 'Godsake, hurry up and die.'
I was thinking about what I could say on this topic. I know I would run off and spend time doing the things I find to to be fun. However, for your own research you might want to try lurking in some cancer support group forums. When my mother found out about her cancer she still had over a year of "normal" life where she could do anything she ever dreamed of (within reason). You might find some of those forums discussing these issues.
I meant like, maybe tell him you want him to move on afterwards. That we can't mourn forever and whatnot. That kind of thing. You know, you'd need to express your feelings on the subject. Talk it through. This is death we're talking about. There's a lot of things to think through.
I agree. I think that within any situation all the crazy stuff would come first but towards the end things would start getting a bit more serious and sad.
I would write. And draw. Write and paint and make movies and a radio drama, and take pictures of cats. Spend exorbitant amounts of money on a cintiq and graphics software, and make an animated pilot. I would produce as much art as I possibly could, until I couldn't anymore.
I would quit my lawyer job immediately. Then I would rack up a lot of credit card debt staying in ritzy hotels in luxurious locations. I would dye my hair blond just, you know, to see. I'd spent a night in a haunted house. I would write some letters to some people who have it coming. I would try to crank out a memoir as fast as possible. I would start a social media campaign to get Henry Cavill to take me on a date. I'd hide in the Museum of Natural History and spend a few nights there like the kids in that Basil E. Frankweiler book (not the Met, too boring). And I'd get a dog. Maybe two.
I would try to write my magnum opus of metaphysical ethics and political philosophy. Just in general accomplish as much good as I could in as short a time as possible.
I would make sure the last check I write bounces. Which is intersting now becausewe don't use checks that much anymore.
I would look at the items on my bucket list that I have Not done and do as many of them as a could before I died.