I was sitting down watching one of my favorite movies when I saw something I hadn't noticed before.

[caption id="attachment_132" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Thomas Sangster and Liam Neeson"]<img class="size-medium wp-image-132" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/ThomasSangsterL_468x315-300x201.jpg" alt="Thomas Sangster and Liam Neeson" width="300" height="201" />[/caption]

I've seen <a href="http://www.loveactually.com/#">"Love Actually"</a> six or eight times, and I enjoy almost all the intertwining stories. One of my favorites is the story of the widower played by Liam Neeson and his stepson, both trying to cope with the loss of the woman they both loved. I've always seen this story as one of parent-child love, but when I was watching it this time I saw something in the funeral scene.

Just after the photo montage with the Bay City Rollers singing "Bye Bye Baby," we see the pallbearers carrying the coffin out of the church. Neeson is one of them, and when we see the stricken look on his face, we realize that love does not end with the death of one of those in the relationship.

I can't imagine many things more difficult than burying my wife, unless it would be burying one of my children.

As much as everyone wants to live a long life, I often think the person left behind has a more difficult role to play. I've seen what my mother has been through in the year and a half since my dad died, and even though they had a long happy life together, when you love someone you always want more.

In a way, I imagine that's probably true about life as well. Mitch Albom's book, <a title="Mitch Albom" href="http://mitchalbom.com/home/" target="_blank">"For One More Day,"</a> tells the story of a man who lost his mother to death and then under mysterious circumstances finds himself in the position of spending one more day with her.

My friend Mickey has often posed a hypothetical question to me, asking if I could go back and relive one day, which one would I pick. It's the question that faces Emily, the young mother in Thornton Wilder's "Our Town" who dies in childbirth and finds herself in the afterlife. When she goes back to see one day from her life, she is advised to make it an ordinary one.

When she sees the beauty of everyday life with the people she loved, she asks a question.

<em>"Does anybody realize what life is while they're living it - every, every minute?"</em>

Of course not, the stage manager replies. Well, saints and poets, maybe. They do some.

I'm no saint, and I'm not much of a poet, but I think I know which day I would pick. I believe it was September 26th, 1992, my third date with my lovely Nicole. We had gone to the movies in Los Angeles and we had returned to her house. We were sitting in the car in her driveway and talking. She told me she knew I was dating someone else too -- I had told her -- and that she didn't think I would pick her.

"I want to keep trying, though," she said. "Because I think you're worth it."

There have been wonderful moments since, but at that point, that might have been the single greatest moment of my life.

Life is wonderful, and nothing matters more than love.