10 True Stories That Will Make You Cry and Remember What Matters

A man's mother was 92. She was tired but still sharp. One Sunday she said, "Take a picture of us." He held up his phone and made a face. They both laughed.

He sent the picture to his sister. He thought it was nothing. Just another Sunday.

Three days later his mother passed away in her sleep.

That picture is the last one of them together. He has it printed and framed by his bed now. He says he looks at it every morning. "She knew," he tells people. "She didn't say so. But she knew."

A hospice nurse asked a dying man if he wanted music. He couldn't talk anymore. He nodded a little.

She started humming. She didn't know what to hum. So she just hummed an old hymn her grandmother used to sing.

His wife was on the other side of the bed. She started crying. "That was the song we danced to at our wedding," she said. "He hasn't heard it in 50 years."

The dying man squeezed his wife's hand. He held on through the whole song. Then he let go.

She was 28 and had just been diagnosed with stage 3 cancer. She didn't tell anyone for a week. She was too scared.

One morning she opened her mailbox. There was a handwritten letter inside. No return address.

It said: "I don't know who lives here. But I'm dying. I'm writing letters to random houses on my street to say hello. I'm 84. I'm not afraid. I just wanted to say hi to one more stranger before I go. I hope your day is good. I hope your life is good. Be well."

She sat on the steps of her house and cried. Then she walked back inside and called her mom. She told her about the cancer. She didn't want to wait anymore.

He spent a weekend building the crib. He cursed at it. He hit his thumb. He finally finished it on Sunday night. His wife took pictures. They were going to be parents in three weeks.

Two weeks later she lost the baby. He sat in the nursery alone that night. Then he took the crib apart, slowly, screw by screw. He put it back in the box. He cried while he did it.

Three years and one healthy daughter later, he built the same crib again. Same room. Same screws. His daughter slept in it for two years.

He still has it in the attic. He says he's not building it a third time. He says it's already done its job.

He was 89. His wife was in a nursing home. She had advanced Alzheimer's. She had not recognized him for 4 years.

He came every morning at 8:00. He sat with her. He held her hand. He told her about the news, the weather, the dog. She would smile sometimes. Mostly she just looked past him.

A young nurse asked him once, "Sir, she doesn't know who you are. Why do you keep coming?"

He looked at her gently. He said, "She doesn't know me. But I still know her."

His mom packed his lunch every day. He saw a homeless man at the bus stop on his walk home. He started giving the man half his sandwich.

He did this for months. His mom kept making bigger sandwiches without saying anything. She had figured it out.

One day the man wasn't there. The next day he wasn't either. The boy worried for a week.

On the eighth day, a letter showed up at his front door. It was from the man at the bus stop. He had been sleeping in a shelter for a month, and they had helped him find a job and a small apartment. He had remembered the boy. He wrote, "I lasted those bad weeks because you fed me. Now I want to feed myself. Thank you for not giving up on me."

A young man's father died suddenly. He never got to say goodbye. He never got to say I love you. He carried it for years.

One night, six years after his father died, he was cleaning out an old email account he hadn't used since college. He found a draft. It was an email he had started writing to his dad and never sent. "Hey Dad, just wanted to say…"

He finished the email. He poured everything into it. The mistakes. The thanks. The regret. The love. Then he hit send.

His father's email account was closed. The email bounced. But he had finally said it.

Her mother was sick. She knew she wouldn't make it through the year. She had a 7-year-old daughter.

She bought 65 birthday cards. One for every year of her daughter's life from 8 to 72. She wrote in every single one. She sealed them up. She gave the box to her sister and made her promise.

Every year on her daughter's birthday, an envelope arrives in the mail. The handwriting is her mother's. The notes are from a woman who has been gone for decades but still knows her child.

Her daughter is 34 now. She has 38 cards left. She doesn't open them early. She likes knowing they're still ahead of her.

A young soldier was killed in combat. His best friend, also a soldier, came home alive. He carried the dead man's watch in his pocket for thirty years.

He had tried to return it to the family. He couldn't bring himself to do it. He thought he wasn't ready. Then he thought they weren't ready. Then he just kept putting it off.

On the 30th anniversary of his friend's death, he finally went. He knocked on the door. An old woman answered. It was the dead soldier's mother. She was 91 now.

He held out the watch in his shaking hand. She looked at him. She didn't cry. She said, "He sent it home. He used you as the mail. Thank you for finally delivering it."

A woman's father called her on a Tuesday. They talked for an hour. About her job. About his garden. About nothing in particular. They laughed.

At the end of the call, just before they hung up, he said, "I love you, kiddo. I'm proud of you." She said, "I love you too, Dad."

He had a heart attack the next morning.

She has played that call back in her mind a thousand times. She is grateful for two things. That she had said it back. And that they had talked about nothing in particular. The last hour she had with her father was just an ordinary hour. That's the kind she misses now.