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than 2,300 people commented on the entry; a staggering number for a personal blog. Thousands more began following her on Twitter and soon Alice, her tragic story and her bucket list adventure, were featured in newspapers and on television screens across the country. The list itself ranged from the simple to the


sensational. Alice wanted to go to her school prom; she wanted to get a back massage and have her hair done. But she also wanted to swim with sharks,


to stay in the special Chocolate room at Alton Towers theme park, to meet Take That and go whale watching. And, from between that first post in 2011 and


her death in January, the teenager achieved everything on her list. But she did more than that; with her


urging, more than 60,000 people signed up on the national bone-marrow register. And Alice’s sister Milly has so far raised more than £100,000 for charity. The courage and resilience of Alice and her family held the attention of the nation and so the blog’s readership grew. One by one the items on Alice’s bucket


list were ticked off and each time she achieved another goal, she wrote up the experience online. The blog became one of two stories. In the


first, a young girl went through a series of scans and operations, growing weaker as a relentless disease coursed through her. This story she told with simple honesty and


a heartbreaking lack of self-pity, something an older person would have struggled to deliver. But in the other, a brave, inspiring teenager


refused to let a cancer she had done nothing to deserve stop her enjoying her life. It would have been easy for her to feel utterly, uselessly sorry for herself and who could blame her? She had been told her life was to end just as it was really beginning to start. She was facing death decades before her parents Vicky and Simon would expect to face their own. Yet instead she refused to do this, not in some


grandstanding act of defiance, but by simply choosing to concentrate on how best to use the limited time she knew she had. Even in her final entry, in January this year,


Alice remained buoyant. She wrote: “Other than the fact that I’m really tired and funny lights still bother me, I feel a whole lot better and the lumps in my neck have actually gone down again. So, my New Year mission is to get a bit fatter which will hopefully give me more energy!” Less than a month after this, she had died. One of the most interesting goals on Alice’s


36 Farewell Magazine


list was “Get everyone to have a bucket list”. And perhaps there is some sense there - and some interest. A quick search on the internet throws up two


websites; bucketlist.org and bucketlist.net. Both sites allow users to upload their own personal bucket lists and share them with each other. The most popular entries are listed and ranked, giving inspiration to others. At bucketlist.org, the most popular entries include swimming with a whale shark, climbing Ben Nevis, volunteering at a hospice, meeting Oprah Winfrey, trying a fried Snickers, falling in love and starting a family. Users share their lists then tick off each


experience, inspiring each other in a supportive community. The idea here is not for terminally ill people


to pack their final few months with exotic adventures. It is for everyone to really think what it is they want from life, write these goals down and use the energy and encouragement of a like-minded community to achieve them. For Alice Pyne, the bucket list was a way of


packing a lifetime’s exploration and experience into the handful of years she was given. But by the time she died, she had done more than many people achieve in a life five times as long. We all die; all our lives are terminal. We may


not know how long we have, but, like Alice, we should live while we can and perhaps a bucket list can help us do just that.


Top – Bottom: Whales 2 by pr3vje@sxc.hu, Red parachute landing on stormy sky by Danshutter@Shutterstock.com, Machu Picchu by mustaine99@sxc.hu, Don't let her fall, she is so fragile by dimitri_c@sxc.hu, Diving in Egypt near Dahab in the red sea by phutureuk@sxc.hu


Top: Colorful hot air balloon fly over the blue sea by LittleStocker@Shutterstock.com, Bottom: Monte Bragalata 4 by marco_cecc@sxc.hu


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