“Here,” she said to her son. Hands him a piece of paper.

“What is this?” Robbie asks.

“A checklist,” mom says. “So you can focus on important things. And I get no more calls from school asking me to bring your lunch.”

“What if I forget to check it?”

“Don’t be a smart-aleck,” mom says. “I love you.”

Robbie didn’t forget to use the checklist.

He started to use it every day.

Soon he was using it on weekends.

The list expanded over weeks, months, years.

The checklist spanned pages by the time he married and started a family.

Robbie’s wife said, are the children getting their own list?

“Only if they need it,” he said. “The burden is great, checking off all these things.”

Decades passed and Robbie lay on his deathbed, surrounded by children and grand-children.

Weakly, he unfolded a piece of paper and handed it to his oldest child.

“A checklist,” he said.

“Pop, it only has one item on it.”

“I know,” Robbie answered.

The eldest read it out loud. “Love everything and the rest will get done.”