A Thousand Boy Kisses

Why does it take a life ending to learn how to cherish each day? Why must we wait until we run out of time to start to accomplish all that we dreamed, when once we had all the time in the world? Why don’t we look at the person we love the most like it’s the last time we will ever see them? Because if we did, life would be so vibrant. Life would be so truly and completely lived.

Why be miserable when you can be happy? It’s an obvious choice to me.

This isn’t the end. It’s just a little pause in our lives. And I’ll be watching over you, every single day. I’ll be in your heart. I’ll be in the blossom grove that we love so much, in the sun and the wind.

because sometimes all we get are moments. There are no do-overs; whatever happens in a moment defines life—perhaps it is life.

He kissed me until there was no part of me that didn’t know who it belonged to. He kissed me until my heart again fused with his—two halves of one whole.

When you’re near, my heart doesn’t sigh, it soars,

Kiss eight hundred and nineteen was the kiss that changed it all. The kiss that proved that a long-haired brooding boy from Norway and a quirky girl from the Deep South could find a love to rival the greats.

I think hearts beat a rhythm like a song. I think, that just like music, we’re drawn to a particular melody. I heard your heart’s song, and yours heard mine.

It’s like music,” she explained. “When I look at you, when you touch me, when I see your face … when we kiss, my heart plays a song. It sings that it needs you like I need air. It sings to me that I adore you. It sings that I’ve found its perfect missing part.

He explains, the times where there is only a single set of footprints were not when He walked beside them, but instead, when He carried them.

they signaled my eternal gratitude to the boy sitting silently in the dark. The boy as gifted at photography as I was at music. He was my heart. The heart freely given to me as a child. The heart that made up one half of my own. The boy who, though breaking inside, loved me so deeply that he gave me this farewell. Gave me, in the present, the dream that my future never could. My soul mate who captured moments.

Maybe we’re like the cherry blossom, Rune. Like shooting stars. Maybe we loved too much too young and burned so bright that we had to fade out.” She pointed behind us, to the blossom grove. “Extreme beauty, quick death. We had this love long enough to teach us a lesson. To show us how capable of love we truly are.

four hundred and thirty-four, with my Rune at the beach … when his love came home.

I wish that people realized how this felt every day. Why does it take a life ending to learn how to cherish each day? Why must we wait until we run out of time to start to accomplish all that we dreamed, when once we had all the time in the world? Why don’t we look at the person we love the most like it’s the last time we will ever see them? Because if we did, life would be so vibrant. Life would be so truly and completely lived.

I have come to understand that death, for the sick, is not so hard to endure. For us, eventually, our pain ends, we go to a better place. But for those left behind, their pain only magnifies.” Poppy

An unrivaled beauty, limited in its life. A beauty so extreme in its grace that it can’t last. It stays to enrich our lives, then drifts away in the wind. Never forgotten. Because it reminds us we must live. That life is fragile, yet in that fragility, there is strength. There is love. There is purpose. It reminds us that life is short, that our breaths are numbered and our destiny is fixed, regardless of how hard we fight.

I didn’t need grand gestures or fairy tales; a normal life with the boy I loved would have always been enough.

love was simply the tenacity to make sure that the other half of your heart knew he, or she, was adored in every way.

used to know a boy, a boy I loved with my whole heart, who lived for a single moment. Who told me that a single moment could change the world. It could change someone’s life. That one moment could make someone’s life, in that brief second, infinitely better or infinitely worse.

She told me that the best and prettiest things never stay around for long. She said that a cherry blossom was too beautiful to last all year. It was more special because its life was short.

I had no idea how to live a day without her next to me. How to breathe without her by my side.

We all have people who carry us through the worst of times, the saddest of times, the times that seem impossible to break free from. In

For believers in true, epic, soul-shattering love. This one’s for you.

Because I love her. I love her more than I could ever explain. My single set of footprints in the sand.

I don’t think, in all my life, that I’ve ever seen two kids love each other so hard so young, and even harder as teens.

Kiss eight hundred and nineteen was the kiss that changed it all.

isn’t our true home, girlie. This life … well, it’s just a great big adventure while we have it. An adventure to enjoy and love with all of our heart before we go on to the greatest adventure of all.

It’s the moment that reminds me that I’m lucky. Because in that moment I experienced the love my mamaw sent me on this adventure of a thousand boy-kisses to find. That moment when you know that you are loved so much, that you are the center of somebody’s world so wonderfully, that you lived … even if it was only for a short time.” Keeping

So please, light your lanterns and help my kisses reach my girl.” I