10 Short Love Stories That Will Restore Your Belief in Love

On their first anniversary, Amanda's husband brought home a bouquet. It was beautiful. White roses, pink peonies, baby's breath. There was a small card tucked inside.

The card said: "My love for you will last until the last flower in this bouquet dies."

Amanda smiled. She put the flowers in a vase. A week later they started to wilt. She felt a small ache in her chest. She didn't want them to die.

She started to clear them out of the vase. That's when she found it. One single flower in the middle of the bouquet was silk. It looked exactly like the others. It would never die.

Frank's wife of 23 years was in a car accident. She slipped into a coma. The doctors said she might never wake up. He went to the hospital every day anyway.

He talked to her. He told her about his day. He told her about the dog. He told her how the maple tree out front was changing color. The nurses thought it was sweet but pointless.

One day Frank brought a small TV from home. He played their wedding video. He held her hand and described every frame. "Look, baby, you're laughing. There's your dad walking you down."

Her finger twitched. Then her whole hand. Two days later she opened her eyes. The first thing she said was, "Did we ever get the dog from the shelter?"

It was 1 a.m. She was furious. Her ex had given her a fake phone number to get rid of her. She dialed it. She was ready to scream.

A sleepy voice picked up. It was a man. He had never met her ex. He was just some guy in another state.

She tried to apologize. He laughed. He said, "It's okay. Tell me about him." She did. Then she told him about her job, her dog, her favorite movie.

They talked for two hours. They talked the next night, too. And the next. Twenty-seven years later, she still laughs when his voice comes through the phone.

It was Christmas Eve. Della and Jim were broke. They had been broke for months. But they each wanted to give the other a real gift.

Della sold her long, beautiful hair to a wig maker. She used the money to buy a platinum chain for the gold pocket watch Jim had inherited from his grandfather.

Jim sold the watch. He used the money to buy a set of pearl combs for Della's long, beautiful hair.

When they opened their gifts that night, they both sat there silently for a long time. Then they laughed. Then they cried. They had both given the most precious thing they owned for the other. That was the real gift. The combs and the chain were just paper around it.

Sarah's husband had been making her lunch every workday for 14 years. She didn't ask him to. He just did. Sandwich. Apple. A small folded note on a napkin.

The notes were never long. "You've got this." "I'm proud of you." "Steal a cookie from the break room for me."

When her husband passed away, she found a shoebox in the back of his closet. It was full of unwritten napkins. Hundreds of them. Years of future lunches. He had been writing them ahead of time, in case he ever got sick.

She found one already written for the day he died. It said, "Don't fall apart today. Eat the sandwich first."

They met on a Caribbean cruise in their early twenties. They danced every night for a week. Then she went home to one coast. He went home to the other. They lost touch.

Thirty years later, both of them divorced, both of them living different lives, she got a Facebook message. "Is this the same person who beat me at shuffleboard in 1995?"

It was him. He wanted to meet. He flew in. He hired a violinist to wait at Grand Central Station and play the song they had danced to on the boat.

She heard the first note and started to cry. He stood there with flowers and a question. She said yes before he asked it.

She was dying. Her family knew it. She knew it. They didn't talk about it. They just spent every day together in her bedroom at home.

Her four children sat around her bed. Her brothers stood by the wall. The grandkids took turns climbing up next to her to hug her.

On her last morning, she opened her eyes and looked around the room. She smiled. She squeezed her daughter's hand. She said, "I feel so loved right now."

Those were her last words. Her family talks about them all the time. They were not about pain. They were not about fear. They were about love. They had given her enough of it. She knew it on the way out.

Their daughter was three. Their mother was sick. She couldn't lift her arms over her head for long. She couldn't braid the little girl's hair anymore.

Her husband sat on YouTube every night for a week. He watched braiding tutorials. He practiced on himself. He practiced on a doll.

Every morning he sat behind his daughter on the kitchen stool. He made two little braids. They were not great at first. They got better.

His wife watched them from the couch. She didn't say anything. She just smiled the kind of smile you only see when somebody loves you the right way.

Her father took a photograph of her every year on her birthday. Same chair. Same window light. Same smile from her, even when she was annoyed and a teenager and pretending to hate it.

He never said why. He just did it.

When she turned 21, he gave her an album. There were 21 photos in it. One per year. Her grow up in pictures.

On the last page he wrote, "You won't always be here. I won't always be here. But this proves we were here together. Every year. I never missed one."

An old man and an old woman held hands at a coffee shop. They were both in their 80s. The waitress couldn't help staring.

She finally asked. "How long have you two been together?"

The old woman smiled. "58 years next month."

"What's the secret?"

The old man squeezed his wife's hand. "There's no secret. We just decided a long time ago that we were going to be on the same team. Every fight, every hard year, every kid, every loss. Same team. That's it."

The waitress went home that night and told her boyfriend everything she'd heard.