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upworthy

bucket list

Adrian Bacolo (bacolosphotos.com)

The classrooms were empty.

Never did I expect to see my former high school, in Delaware, as the site of the Democratic National Convention on TV, but there it was. There was my study hall and my study hall teacher, who also happens to be the former second lady.

When I graduated college in Delaware, I hightailed it out of there, like most people my age. I had big dreams in New York. I wanted to be a writer.

That summer, my father was killed by a distracted driver. She'd gotten lost and pulled off a highway, picking up her phone at a red light to call for directions. She zoomed right through the next red and plowed into my dad, who was turning left. He died instantly. Or so I was told. I was 25, and decided to keep going. I inherited a small insurance settlement. I used it to stay in New York. It was how my dad would have wanted it, I thought.

Now, seventeen years later, those dreams had come true. I'd been published in national magazines and newspapers in addition to copyediting national magazines. But I still wasn't fulfilled. No amount of career success could erase what had happened. I was still working on making it right.

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