Happy National Healthcare Decisions Day! Actually, it’s a whole week, starting April 16. The Day was created to remind all of us of the importance of  having a conversation with our family and friends about what kind of care we’d want, if we couldn’t speak for ourselves; and of having a written advance care directive and a health care proxy to speak for us.

And, in honor of the week, my book, “Last Comforts: Notes from the Forefront of Late Life Care,” is now available in all e-book venues – Kindle, Nook, iBooks, Kobo and more  — for the new low, low price of $5.99!

It’s a good week to think about your bucket list, too, which I wrote about in this Sixtyandme.com post.

Personally, I’ve never been a fan of the idea of coming up with a bucket list. At heart, and I’m sure I’m not alone in this, my clear preference is to focus on the less spectacular but just as satisfying smaller pleasures of daily life. And being grateful for the sometimes unexpected joys to be found there.

The photo accompanying this post is a good example of what I mean. I’m sure that seeing the Grand Canyon is probably atop lots of bucket lists. My husband and I were fortunate enough to be able to visit the South Rim a couple of years ago and of course, it was breathtaking. But here was my favorite moment (although the photo doesn’t do it justice). We had emerged from lunch around the same time as a heavy rain had stopped and there – so close you could practically reach out and touch it – was a rainbow. An unexpected, once-in-a-lifetime vision.

But my bucket list skepticism changed before I read about research conducted by the Stanford Letter Project at the Stanford University School of Medicine. As Dr. VJ Periyakoil, founder of the Stanford Letter Project, pointed out in a compelling opinion piece in The New York Times, it’s important not only to write down several things you’d like to accomplish, experience, see or share – and update your list from time to time as your feelings change – but also to share this with your physicians.

Why? Because they need to know what’s important to you if they are going to provide the best possible care for you, the individual.

If you’re having a problem identifying three to five main goals, Stanford has come up with a handy toolkit to help you. So share the list with your doctor. If you have a chronic illness, the toolkit advises, “Ask your doctor what you need to know about your health and illnesses and if they will prevent you from reaching your goals. Especially ask them about if any treatments they are proposing will prevent you from living your life as you wish to.”

Rethinking the bucket list question, I considered another reason why sharing your list with physicians is an excellent idea. The truth is, so much of thinking about advance care planning and preparing advance care directives has to do with what we don’t want. CPR, yes or no? Feeding tubes, yes or no? Mechanical ventilation, yes or no?

The bucket list, on the other hand, is a clear roadmap for our loved ones and physicians to understand what we do want. So it can be a lovely, positive complement to the admittedly sobering and potentially unpleasant work of envisioning our end-of-life care preferences.