How funny that the quote on my inspirational calender (a gift from my sappy friend,Missy) today is “Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Some stay for awhile, leaving footprints on our hearts and we are never, ever the same.”

I’ve been thinking quite a bit lately about people who have come into my life for brief periods of time and have left me irrevocably changed, for better and for worse. Irony would have it that both are named Chris/Kris.

I’ve hesitated in writing about Chris. And today is no different. I’ve got reams and reams of entries about him, in my head, in my paper journal and on my hard drive. There is no doubt in my mind that they will be posted, I’m just not quite certain when. I am certain that it will not be today, though.

Today belongs to the other Kris, the first Kris.

I lost my childhood best friend ten years ago today. I try not to remember the last day, though there are times when the images creep up on me when I least expect it. It is at those times that I am lost to the tears and the grief of a young life cut short. Instead, I would rather celebrate his memory.

One of my favorite pictures of Kris and me was taken when we were fairly young, in the massive back yard of my childhood home. We’re standing knee deep in leaves, arms linked, a la American Gothic. I’m wearing a Laura Ingalls’s bonnet and Kris wore his favorite blue corduroy pants. We’re both smiling into the camera, squinting a bit in the sunlight.

The memory of that day is vivid in my mind. We’d spent all day playing in the back yard, flinging ourselves with wild abandon through drifting piles of crackling leaves. We spun fantastic tales while pumping our little legs for all we were worth on the swing set. Kris and I eventually wandered next door to play in the sand pile our elderly neighbors so graciously set outside for the neighborhood urchins. I remember he and I running around the backyard catching fire flies at twilight and depositing them in emptied mayonnaise jars capped with aluminum foil, pocked with air holes.

That day, and others like it, is what I try to remember. I have so many fabulous memories with Kris. He was my first and closest male friend. He taught me how to shoot free throws and how to shoot pool. I taught him how to read and play Monopoly. We played cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians. There were only two of us, but we were always partners, fighting imaginary evil.

Neither of us could fight the leukemia that took him from me the day before Valentine’s Day in 1990, though. I wish we could have.