I'd like to relive 10 minutes of the dinner conversation we had with our son Will the night before he died. He was in a great mood, very relaxed, and joking with us. I just wish I could remember it better.

My ten month old son had just been (mis)diagnosed with Autism and I was sitting in his room on the floor while my husband gave him his nighttime bottle. I was feeling the utmost despair, terror, bewilderment ... My son suddenly sat up, turned to me, reached out his arms and threw himself forward. He put his arms around my neck and hugged me close, long and hard, nuzzling his head into my neck. (He had never done that before.)I felt the most enormous sense of comfort coming from him. I know he was comforting me.

I wish I would have trusted that moment more, in which it was blindingly obvious nothing was amiss with our son. Instead I went through many more months of worry before the truth - that all was just fine - reasserted itself. I'll never, ever forget that moment.

It's sad to read that the happiest moments of a lot of peoples' lives are during, and not after, their wedding.

Someone slap me upside the head and tell me it's not true.

Probably the 10 minutes I spent watching the sunrise in utter, total and complete silence in the Australian desert near Uluru. Everybody else on the tour were waiting over by the bus, looking at the Rock, waiting for it to turn red, their cameras screwed into their faces, snapping and chattering away. A couple of my fellow travelers and I snuck a few hundred yards away to the opposite side where the sun was actually coming up and watched it rise, starting out first as a deeper-than-blood-red gash that oozed out onto the horizon, which gradually coalesced and collected itself into a hard, hot, yellow-white disc as it rose over the red sandy desert and spinifex grass in the space of just a few minutes. There were no voices, no animal or insect sounds, no wind and no camera sounds where we stood. We simply watched and took it in as an experience.

The best minutes of my life are those spent curled up and around my husband, drinking in his warmth, reveling in just being with him, sharing my life with him and enjoying our unity.

And you know what? He's in there watching TV now. I can go live the best 10 minutes right now.

Why am I in here?

D'OH!

My best friend visited me on her birthday this year, as she has every year. She had been having lots of health problems, personal troubles (with job, money, family), and I had been very worried about her. Because she lived in another city, and our schedules didn't match well, I didn't see her often, though I talked to her every week. The last time I had seen her, she had looked terrible, barely holding herself together.

But this visit was different. She seemed happy. She had planned to stay one night, but she was enjoying herself so much, she stayed two. We talked and talked, we made dinner, we spent the afternoon at the aquarium, we watched a movie together. I hadn't seen her so contented in a long time.

The next time I saw her, she was in the hospital. Her liver and kidneys had stopped functioning. It turned out that she had been drinking heavily for the last few years, and managed to hide it from everyone, including her co-workers and the friends who lived down the street. She spent two months in the hospital in a great deal of pain, rarely lucid, always scared, and then she died. I would give anything to have ten minutes with her again, looking at the fish in the aquarium and smiling.

Man...how do I choose between the first time I heard my son laugh, or the last time my dad said, "I love you"...

I guess I just won't. Choose.