Current:Home > Contact-us"Love is something that never dies": Completing her father's bucket list-Angel Dreamer Wealth Society D1 Reviews & Insights
"Love is something that never dies": Completing her father's bucket list
View Date:2024-12-23 15:50:11
In her small apartment in Montclair, N.J., Laura Carney's dreams are coming true, just like her father always knew they would, even if unaware of exactly the role he'd play. Laura's first book – "My Father's List: How Living My Dad's Dreams Set Me Free" – was just published, a dream born of a nightmare 20 years ago, when Mick Carney was killed in a car crash at the age of 54.
"I remember thinking how angry I was that he didn't finish his life," Laura said, "that he didn't get to do all the things he set out to do."
He was, she said, the best dad – a sensitive, sentimental, and, like so many of our fathers, complicated man. Laura said, "'You're the best thing I've ever done' – that's what he said all the time."
But he also left her a lot to sift through, as when he split from her mom when Laura was just six years old. Axelrod asked, "Was there something you had to overcome?"
"Oh, of course," she replied. "I believed he abandoned us for a long time."
What she's sifted through the last six years is a list of all those things Mick Carney set out to do – sixty items he wrote down when he was 29. He'd only had a chance to try six when he was killed.
Axelrod asked, "What do you think the value of writing a bucket list is?"
She replied, "Not only are you writing down your intentions for your life, but you're also committing to showing the world who you are authentically. So, even if you don't finish it, maybe your kids find it someday, and then they know what you cared about, and that matters."
When her brother found the list in 2016, Laura said, "I couldn't help but notice 'Talk with the president' right away!"
Mick's bucket list also included "Correspond with the pope." "Run 10 miles straight." "Swim the width of a river." "Surf in the Pacific Ocean." "Go to the Rose Bowl."
It was, she admitted, intimidating: "And then I just got this image in the back of my mind of my dad's face smiling and nodding; that never happened before. So, that was the thing that really made me feel like, Oh, I need to do this."
But when she and her husband, Steven, headed to Georgia, at Jimmy Carter's Sunday service, daunted turned to inspired. "I said, 'President Carter, my father wrote down that he wanted to meet you on his bucket list, and I'm checking that off for him today.' And he said, 'Oh, very good!' This was the most impossible list item, and we did it. And I think everything changed after that, because if I could do the most impossible one, then what was to stop me from doing the rest?"
Ever since, she's been checking them off: "Have five songs recorded." "Go sailing by myself." "Skydive at least once." "Own a black tux."
Axelrod asked, "Was any part of you, as you would read this, be like, 'Come on, Dad'?"
"Yeah!" Laura laughed. "But when I would be in the middle of doing them, I just had this feeling that my dad wouldn't let me fail."
Maybe the most challenging for this reluctant driver: hopping behind the wheel of a Corvette. "I took it slow," she said. "I knew it was the same highway where my dad's crash had happened."
But the challenge was where the healing was. Laura said. "I felt like I now could associate a new memory with driving. And the car phobia went away. Then all of a sudden, I was taking long trips and driving myself! I changed the narrative. My dad and I weren't victims of something anymore."
With the help of her long-gone father, Laura was learning to re-think her approach to life.
Axelrod said, "Underpinning this entire list is, do things to enjoy doing them."
"That's right, which I wasn't doing."
"Your dad was teaching you, through this list, that you derive pleasure from the doing, not how well you do it, from the doing of it?"
"It opened my heart, which had been shut down," Laura said.
So, now Laura Carney is sharing what she learned by completing the list: how she made her connection to her father's memory 54 times tighter, and found peace in the process.
She said, "I'm not stuck in that day when he died anymore. Now I'm living in the present. And I'm going and doing all these incredibly fun things.
"Everybody has that possibility to still have that connection" she said. "Because even though people die, love is something that never dies."
For more info:
- "My Father's List: How Living My Dad's Dreams Set Me Free" by Laura Carney (Post Hill Press), in Trade Paperback, eBook and Audio formats, available via Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Bookshop.org
- Laura Carney (Official site)
- Photographer Adrian Bacolo
Story produced by Young Kim. Editor: Mike Levine.
Jim Axelrod is the chief investigative correspondent and senior national correspondent for CBS News, reporting for "CBS This Morning," "CBS Evening News," "CBS Sunday Morning" and other CBS News broadcasts.
TwitterveryGood! (6914)
Related
- It's cozy gaming season! Video game updates you may have missed, including Stardew Valley
- Police searching for former NFL player Sergio Brown after mother was found dead
- See How The Voice's Niall Horan Calls Out Blake Shelton in New Season 24 Promo
- Actor Billy Miller’s Mom Details His “Valiant Battle with Bipolar Depression” Prior to His Death
- Gisele Bündchen Makes First Major Appearance Since Pregnancy
- 3 Vegas-area men to appeal lengthy US prison terms in $10M prize-notification fraud case
- Former Missouri police officer who shot into car gets probation after guilty plea
- 1 year after Mahsa Amini's death, Iranian activists still fighting for freedom
- 'I was in total shock': Woman wins $1 million after forgetting lotto ticket in her purse
- See Rihanna and A$AP Rocky Debut Newborn Son Riot Rose in Rare Family Photoshoot
Ranking
- Early Week 11 fantasy football rankings: 30 risers and fallers
- UAW threatens to expand strike to more auto plants by end of week
- Spain allows lawmakers to speak Catalan, Basque and Galician languages in Parliament
- Tampa Bay Rays set to announce new stadium in St. Petersburg, which will open in 2028 season
- PSA: Coach Outlet Has Stocking Stuffers, Gifts Under $100 & More for the Holidays RN (up to 60% Off)
- Bowling Green hockey coach put on leave and 3 players suspended amid hazing investigation
- Gisele Bündchen Reflects on Tough Family Times After Tom Brady Divorce
- Police suspect man shot woman before killing himself in Arkansas, authorities say
Recommendation
-
Dallas Long, who won 2 Olympic medals while dominating the shot put in the 1960s, has died at 84
-
Canada expels Indian diplomat as it probes possible link to Sikh’s slaying. India rejects allegation
-
Stock market today: Asian shares weaker ahead of Federal Reserve interest rate decision
-
Judge rejects defense effort to throw out an Oath Keeper associate’s Jan. 6 guilty verdict
-
'Serial swatter': 18-year-old pleads guilty to making nearly 400 bomb threats, mass shooting calls
-
International Criminal Court says it detected ‘anomalous activity’ in its information systems
-
Trump skipping second GOP debate to give competing speech in Detroit
-
Russell Brand, Katy Perry and why women are expected to comment when men are accused of abuse