When his uncle passed away it fell to him to settle the old man’s affairs.
He knew it was coming; knew that he was the only remaining close relative. This was despite the fact that he hardly knew the man. He knew that his wife had left him, apparently for another man. It had been quite sudden and completely unexpected. After this, the old man had kept pretty much to himself. Anyway, duty called and he did what had to be done regarding the legal side of things. Finally, he took a trip out to the now vacant house to look through any personal belongings that had to be removed before the place was put on the market. It was during this gathering up that he came across the list.
It was in a drawer, along with old receipts, private letters and a few scraps of paper. He was clearing it all out when he found the brown envelope marked ‘To Do’. Inside was a folded sheet of paper. Opening it up, he saw it was a list of a dozen items. It was obviously some kind of bucket list. The heading read ‘Things to Do before I Die’.
He sat down to read through the items. He noted that more than half of them had been given a tick. He smiled. He knew the old boy had been something of a dark horse, living on his own for the last several years after his wife left. He’d heard that he’d travelled abroad a few times, so he wasn’t surprised to see items like ‘Visit the Parthenon’ and ‘Cruise the Danube’ given a tick.
However, the tick next to ‘Make her disappear’ shook him up something shocking…