the happy couple

I can't think of Pat and Marilyn one without the other. They were college sweethearts, and they entwined like honeysuckle vines for more than 50 years. Their lives were full of tragedy—they lost a daughter and her daughter to a congenital heart condition—but they had lots of love, too, and each other. They memorialized their daughter with a horse therapy program for the multiply disabled children at the Helen Keller center in Talladega, Ala. You can read about it in this article I wrote for People magazine.
   Anyway, while I was in Alabama in August, Marilyn had just been diagnosed with some bad cancer, so I didn't go to see them. But last Thursday I got to thinking about them and texted my cousin in Alabama to ask after Marilyn. He told me she had died the day before. I can't imagine what it must be to lose a lifelong partner. Pat and Marilyn.