A woman whose father died in a car crash 20 years ago has ticked off all the items on a bucket list he left behind but was unable to complete before his sudden death.
Forty-five-year-old journalist Laura Carney spent nearly six years checking off the 54 unfinished items on the list, which she only discovered more than ten years after her father’s passing.
Mick Carney’s life ended suddenly in 2003 when a teenager distracted by their cell phone crashed into him while driving. His daughter was just 25 at the time.
When in 2016 Carney discovered a hand-written bucket list scrawled on three pages of an old spiral notebook and with only five items checked off, she knew she had found the perfect opportunity to reconnect with her late father.
‘I knew immediately. I had to do it,’ said Carney.
Journalist Laura Carney spent nearly six years ticking off 54 unfinished items on her late father’s bucket list. She is pictured with the framed hand-written pages

Carney found the incomplete bucket list in 2016, more than ten years after her father died in a car crash. Pictured is the first page of the list containing items one through 11 – none are checked off

Mick Carney with his daughter Laura in 1989. Mick worked as a salesman and was born in Delaware
Initially she set herself a deadline of December 2020, but the pandemic derailed those plans since a number of items on the list required travel. But she persevered, and five years, 11 months later, on December 27 2022, she checked off the final item.
‘It was relief,’ she said of the feeling. ‘The way my dad died was so sudden and when that happens you have to deal with the scariness of how sudden it is in addition to the grief.’
This time, she said, ‘it felt slower and more peaceful. It was almost like he was dying a second time but this time I could accept it because I felt like I had sent him off, in a way,’ she said.
In an upcoming book, My Father’s List, How Living My Dad’s Dreams Set Me Free, Carney chronicles her experience completing the list and recounts how it felt to vicariously fulfil her father’s dreams.
Mick Carney’s list was written in 1978 – the year Laura was born. Of the 60 items included on it, when she discovered it in an old suede pouch with a number of his other belongings, only five had been ticked off.
The few things Mick had managed to do included giving a monologue in a nightclub, watching a World Series game and being interviewed for a radio show.
Born in Delaware, Mick was a salesman by vocation, but he was also passionate about music and writing.
Notably, he had crossed out one item, number 55, and labeled it ‘failed’. It would have required him to pay back his own father ‘$1,000 plus interest’.
Carney said her father wrote the list when he was 29 and only just starting to build a family with her mother. They divorced around six years later.
She wasn’t sure why her father owed his own father $1,000, but said seeing that he had failed to repay him reassured her, in an odd way.
‘I found a lot of peace when I read that item because growing up sometimes I could be resentful,’ she said. ‘My mom paid for my college education, not my dad,’ she added. ‘To learn that he was always, sort of, just getting by, in a way, I found a lot of peace and forgiveness in that.’
With one item eliminated and five ticked off, that left a total of 54 items remaining for Carney to take on herself. Some had to be modified a little for them to make sense.
‘What I started realizing was, even when I did the items completely literally they would turn up slightly different than I thought,’ said Carney.
‘But I started gradually realizing that each of these list items has a lesson for me and that’s the part that matters the most because now the list belongs to me.’
One particularly challenging task for Carney to have fulfilled would have been: ‘Play golf a few times in the 70s.’
‘My stepdad and my mom are in their 70s. So I thought, well, if nothing else, at least I can play golf with them a few times. And I thought, well, maybe we can do it when it’s 70 degrees out,’ she said.

In an upcoming book, My Father’s List, How Living My Dad’s Dreams Set Me Free, Carney recounts the process of completing the list. It will be released on June 13

Pictured is the final page of the physical copy of Mick’s list. Item 55, to repay his father $1,000, was crossed off and annotated with ‘failed’

To tick ‘play golf a few times in the 70s’ off the list Carney played gold with her stepdad and mom a few times

One of the more abstract items on the list involved ‘riding a horse fast’. Carney is pictured on horseback

Carney (pictured) drove a Corvette for 20 minutes from the intersection where her father died

Carney also went sailing to meet the ‘go sailing by myself’ task written into her father’s bucket list
Ironically, one of the most overwhelming items on the list required publishing multiple novels. Though Carney’s upcoming book is technically a memoir, she decided it would count.
She noted that she was therefore killing two birds with one stone and said the book was ‘never just a vehicle to describe the list – it was on the list itself.’
‘I kind of structured my memoir like a novel, as I’m the character in it going on all these adventures,’ she said. ‘I think he would have felt that counted.’
And to fulfil the requirement of publishing multiple books, Carney and her husband, who is a book designer for MacMillan, republished her late father’s book – a compilation of essays.
According to Carney, some of the most challenging items to tick off involved owning a large house and land, dancing at Mick’s granddaughter’s wedding and making more money than is needed.
Those more challenging items, she said, helped her to reconcile a ‘lingering resentment’ she felt towards her father.
Other items were logistically hard to fulfil. They included corresponding with the pope, speaking with the president and beating a number-one seed in a tennis tournament.
In October after writing a letter to the Vatican, Carney received a signed letter in response, in which the Pope sent his prayers.

Carney and her husband are pictured on either side of Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter. Carter had just become president in 1978 when her father wrote the list

Laura’s father Mick Carney is pictured basking in the sun

Carney and her husband redesigned the cover of her father’s book, which was a compilation of essays about the post 60s generation

In October 2022 Carney received a signed letter from the Vatican saying Pope Francis ‘has prayed for the eternal rest’ of Carney’s father
‘Dear Ms. Carney,’ the letter began.
‘His holiness Pope Francis wishes me to thank you for your thoughtful letter. He has prayed for the eternal rest of your father, and he asks Almighty God to sustain you and your family with the hope brought by our faith in the Resurrection,’ it read.
To speak with a president she turned her attention to Jimmy Carter, who had been president in 1978 when the list had been written. She also found references to his name in some of her dad’s other notebooks.
It was known that Carter would teach a Sunday class in a church in his hometown of Plains, Georgia, so Carney made a trip south. But merely going wasn’t going to cut it: she was going to have to actually talk to the former president.
‘By the time I did go up and take a picture with him at the end of the day, which everybody does, I just said, “Sir, my dad wrote on his bucket list that he wanted to talk with you so I’m checking that off for him today,” and he said, “Oh, very good.”‘
‘But he offered his hand to shake mine and he said, “Come back down to Plains and see us again.” That was a couple of different sentences so I think that counts,’ she said.
Though Carney often had a hard time, she said ticking off some items was more fun than anything else. Though nervous, she drove a Corvette for 20 minutes starting at the intersection where her father had died in 2003. She also taught herself to sail to satisfy the ‘go sailing by myself’ item.

Carney is pictured completing the quintessential bucket list item by going skydiving

Carney is pictured in a recording studio to complete a task on the list that required her to record five songs. This was the final item she checked off the list

Laura Carney is pictured with a surf board – surfing in the Pacific Ocean was one of the items on her father’s list

Carney is pictured at Santa Monic harbor having run 10 straight miles and ticked another item off her father’s bucket list

When the pandemic struck and travel was no longer viable, Carney focused on pandemic-friendly items, such as growing a watermelon. Hers ended up being about the size of a golf ball

Laura Carney (right) is pictured as a child next to her late father Mick (center) and brother Dave (left) in 1989
As is the case with most bucket lists, there were a also number of travel destinations Mick had wanted to visit before he died.
Many were places around the US but others around the world: New Orleans, Paris, London, Vienna, Dresden, Berlin, L.A., San Diego, Las Vegas, Chicago and St. Thomas in the Caribbean.
Carney said that, of all the destinations, her favorite was Vienna, where she spent two weeks alone.
And although many of the travel plans had to be changed due to COVID-19 restrictions, some tasks were actually compatible with pandemic life.
One of the more peculiar prerequisites for finishing the list was that Carney had to grow her own watermelon. Though the watermelon ended up being not much larger than a golf ball, she still grew it from a seed.
Carney revealed that, despite finally finishing her father’s list in December, she still has her work cut out, as now she is ticking off items from her own bucket list. So far she is 20 down, 80 to go.
But that list, she said, was more adventure-focused and less about life goals, so she wrote one more.
‘I wrote a second list for myself and this wasn’t just adventures and things that I think would be fun to do. This was what I actually want to do with my life,’ she said.
‘I wrote it down and then I put it away somewhere. Because I think my dad’s list was like that. It wasn’t just, “This would be fun.” I think he really wanted to be a writer, he wanted to be a songwriter. It was actual goals that he had,’ she said.
‘It’s the act of writing it down that’s the hard part.’
My Father’s List will be released on June 13 and published by Post Hill Press. It can be purchased here.
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