Dying just a millisecond before I was about to say something I really wanted the people I love to hear.

Rodents – including the tiniest mouse.

Democracy proves to be a Potemkin village and gross inequality becomes our permanent way of life.

It was desperate because of certain things, ingredients like my father being an alcoholic, my mother having too many babies in too short a time, no work available in Ireland, and even when my father did get a job he drank the wages. Then there was the harsh kind of schooling we had with school masters who ruled with a stick and then because of the overwhelming presence of the church, which imbued us with fear all the time. So it was fear, dampness, poverty, alcoholism, fear of the church, fear of the school masters, fear in general.

My distractibility, diminishing memory, and capacity for sustained concentration. My English master once said I had the brain of a butterfly. I feel that 40 years later, I’ve evolved into Dory from Finding Nemo.

My mother. She’s 85 and rather than diminishing with age, she keeps surprising and growing more marvelous. She finds fun when most are jaded, wonder when most are cynical, and is curious when most are bored. She gave me life and continues to show me how to live it daily. And I know that everyone who meets her thinks the same.

Both of the days my children were born. It was like I’d stepped through a mirror and everything turned Technicolor.

In my bed, a hot-water bottle on my tummy, the windows are open, reading a book that I’m already into, chocolate at hand, all with the knowledge that everyone I love and know is happy.

At the right time, and like my father—utterly without fear or pain, at home, with all whom I love. It was his last lesson as a parent to me.