On Monday, April 15, 2013 two bombs exploded near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. I was sitting at my desk on Gonda 1 in the Mayo Clinic when I found out. I spent the next 15 minutes on Twitter, Facebook and Google trying to understand what happened.

On September 11, 2001 I was sitting on the couch in the living room of our townhouse with Caesar sitting on my lap watching the Today Show. They were talking about what appeared to be a fire at the World Trade Center in New York when a “small plane” appeared to hit the other World Trade Center tower. We later found out that it was not a small plane and they were two of four planes that were to be used as weapons by terrorists that day.

These to date are two of the most engrained memories that I have in my life. I can remember every detail around those moments, with almost every one of my senses engaged up to the near numb feeling that I experienced throughout my entire body. They are also the worst memories that I have.

Fortunately, I have two equally good memories where the same senses engaged.

The first is when your mother was walking toward me on our wedding day, right up until your Grandpa Marv let go of her at the altar and went in for the kiss. He kissed me and not your mom. She remembers that.

The rest of the ceremony and the day are a blur because of nerves and activity. Most Wisconsin weddings would be a blur because of the drinking, but I had one glass of champagne all day.

The second good memory was when you were born on Friday, July 13, 2007. I remember almost every moment of joy, anticipation and even fear. Right after you were born there was what I thought was a frantic call for help and you weren’t making a peep. It was probably seconds before we heard your voice for the first time, but even today when I think about it, it feels like hours.

There are other memories, some of which I mentioned in previous posts and others I hope to get to in the future, but these are the four most significant.

The four memories where I can recall the tastes, the sounds, exactly what I saw like someone hit record in my brains blue-ray player, the sensation of numbness and tingling all the way to my finger tips in all occasions and finally the smells right down to how stinky Caesar was on September 11, 2001.

I figured out almost immediately what the common link between these memories were. They are the most powerful memories I have that have shown me how precious life and love are.

Life and love are by far the most precious things we have, and we should never take them for granted.