My Siamese cat, which I had freeze-dried after she died. I really think their future partners will like it.

Compassion, resourcefulness and resilience form a rounded good person. So that’s what I’d like to leave my children and grandchildren.

Shortly after my terminal diagnosis, I knew that one of my biggest priorities was to create memories for my children. Chloe and Logan are both so young that it's likely they'll have no direct memories of me. Dylan is the oldest, and at 5 (turns 6 in December), his memories are likely to be fuzzy. Hence the engineering question: What would make for the sharpest, most visceral memory, esp. for a kid who loves animals? Answer: go for a Dolphin Swim!

A book of passwords for all the electrical stuff in the house.

My favorite writer is Alice Munro—all of her books. She’s a tremendous writer and has taught me so much about writing. She’s my favorite among many, many other books and writers I love.

But I’m not okay with dying, just for the record.

Never date anyone who is mean to you or others. Kindness matters.

And then I tired of waiting tables. It made me feel diminished and sad, but it was a great way to earn a living for a while.

I have two kids, so once we get them off to school, I tool around on email and Facebook longer than I should. Then I shut those things down and get to work.

And so it’s true; I think what I said on that post is that every day since my mom died, there hasn’t been a day that I haven’t thought about my own death. That’s true. And I don’t think about it in a morbid way, but I think of it in a way that I’m aware of not taking my life for granted and not taking your life for granted, or any of our lives for granted.