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If I had a “bucket list,” and I don’t, not really, it would involve people and places.

Oh, I’m sure that through the years there were places in the world that I would have really liked to visit, as well as places I truly wished I could see just once more.  

Especially did I want to visit once again Regensburg, Germany, and Fort Skelly, where I spent much of my time in the army, save for two periods of almost four months each when I was TDY (temporary duty) playing football first for the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment Black Horse team, then the following year for the VII Corps Jayhawks.  One couldn’t ask for better “duty” than that.  

I would especially like to see again some of my former teammates, although some, perhaps many, have passed on, I’m sure.

Although I visited many countries while in Europe, I never made it to Normandy.  As an almost life-long WWII history buff, that was up near the top of my bucket list.  

Also, I would have liked to visit New Zealand and Australia, especially the former.

I have been to over forty of our states, from coast to coast, and enjoyed 

that – spread over many years – tremendously.  

Then there are those, a very special few, whom I wanted to see, talk with, be with again if just for a little while.  Some are gone, some not, and some, most in fact, I know not where they are, or if they are still among the living.  They live in my memory.  

Probably, surely, I would assume, many of you have had similar feelings, emotions, in this regard.  I certainly don’t think I’m the exception to the norm.  

The reasons I never did most of the things on my “bucket list” had to do with, earlier, economic and time constraints, and later with age and health considerations.  In other words, life intervened. I choose not to focus on these things now, but rather to know and appreciate how blessed I’ve been, and how grateful I am.  

As Alfred, Lord Tennyson wrote:  “Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and 

tho’/We are not that strength which in old days/Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are . . .”

So now we go forth into a new year.  Let us do so with hope. 

And may this struggling, weary world have mercy granted to and upon it.