What to Know
Losing your spouse is a special kind of heartbreak. You enter a relationship with someone and assume that you have the rest of your lives together. So you make plans for that future. Maybe you have children. No matter what the plans are, you think you have time to make them happen. But what happens if everything changes in an instant? That’s what happened to mom Leslie Harter-Berg when her husband died suddenly. In the years after his death, she discovered a bucket list he created, and now she’s gone viral on social media for checking them off with their children.
She’s documenting the journey on TikTok.
@leslieharterberg Sharing a little more of Ryan’s bucket list and how we’ve checked it off through the years ❤️💔#griefjourney #grieftok #bucketlist ♬ original sound – Leslie Harter-Berg
Leslier Harter-Berg has been documenting her and her sons going through her late husband’s 33 bucket list items in posts that have gone viral on the platform.
The list is as follows:
LIST of THINGS to do Before I DIE
- make a list of things to do before I die
- Make an independent film
- go on a road trip
- get a 4.00 GPA
- Go skydiving
- have a band (good)
- play in a concert
- Get married
- have kids
- stage dive
- make a website
- bungie jump
- take piano lessons
- learn to ride a unicycle
- live in a mansion
- play chess in a park
- Read the whole bible 5X + ☐ ☐ ☐ ☐
- go surfing
- learn to draw japanimation
- go jetskiing
- go snowmobiling
- drag race in a car
- invent something
- run in a marathon
- Be the best man at a wedding
- go to a public facility dressed as a pirate
- go to an art museum and appreciate
- ride in a taxi
- Build a 3 foot card tower
- live a riteous life
- learn to spell
- own a nice computer
- own a comfy couch
People had such strong reactions to the list.
“Oh what a beautiful way to live through the grief,” one commenter wrote.
“‘Make a list of things to do before I die’ hit so hard for some reason…sending hugs to yall. Wishing y’all ease as you grieve,” another person wrote.
“You should make a little website with this exact bucket list so that we can tick things off ourselves,” another person suggested.
Someone else suggested that they “then frame the original bucket list and add pictures around it from you guys doing it.”
She had no idea life would turn out this way.
@leslieharterberg How dare he leave me such a treasure! #widow #grieftok ♬ Polar Express – ❄️🎄- Toby -🎄❄️
Harter-Berg spoke with Newsweek about the viral list, telling the outlet that she met her late husband Ryan at work where they made educational videos for children. “We fell in love, got married and decided to start our own business creating videos,” she explained.
“That was our first baby but our real first baby came shortly after, our son Wit in 2015 and then our other son Rory in 2018.”
A year later, everything changed. During a family trip to Palm Springs in 2019, “Ryan died suddenly of a freak random brain aneurysm and stroke,” she explained. After leaving for their vacation as a family of four, she went home as a widow, a word she “thought only applied to old ladies.”
She had to find a way to keep Ryan’s memory alive for their young sons.
@leslieharterberg I don’t know who needs to hear this, but it’s gonna be ok. ❤️ #griefjourney #widow ♬ original sound – Leslie Harter-Berg
In 2021, Leslie Harter-Berg found a keepsake of Ryan’s she could have never expected. “In a box of his old journals there was a journal from high school with a list of things he wanted to do before death,” she shared.
That led to her and her boys picking one thing from the list and checking it off on Ryan’s birthday. Since her boys were only ages three and one when he died, “I want to make sure the boys still get to celebrate their dad and know where they come from,” Harter-Berg explained.
“They are so like Ryan in so many ways. He also was a huge man child with Legos, Star Wars and arcades so celebrating him is like a kids favorite holiday.”
Her life has changed, but her late husband is still central to her story.
@leslieharterberg Always. #widowsoftiktok #grief ♬ original sound – Leslie Harter-Berg
Harter-Berg has met someone new, remarried, and had another son. But despite that, she has found social media as a way to keep Ryan’s memory alive.
“He was such a huge person and to see people touched by his words so many years later means so much to me,” she said. “There’s this weight you feel when someone dies that you are the carrier of their story.”
