“My husband made sure to find me my new partner before he died” – A different love story

They say the real one love it is not extinguished by death. And that’s what Bob thought when, at the age of 43, he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), an incurable neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. Doctors gave him less than a year to live.

He had his wife Deirdre Fagan and their two children in mind. She wasn’t meant to be alone in life and so Bob set out to make his wife fall in love again.

Bob was Deirdre’s third husband, but her first true love. The two met in graduate school at the University at Albany and subsequently had two children. The couple had been married for nearly a decade when Bob was diagnosed with ALS in 2011.

“It was like someone stopped me on the street and told me he had been killed in an accident. The news hit me like a car crash,” Fagan told Insider, as reported by the New York Post. “I loved him so much, he was such a central part of my life, so I was torn apart when I thought that Bob would just become a story for anyone who didn’t get to know him and experience him,” she explained in her book “Find a place for me”.

Her parents and siblings were also gone, and the thought that her next lover would never know any of the people who had meant so much to her throughout her life was devastating. “It saddened me to realize that the next person I would fall in love with probably wouldn’t know either of my parents, my siblings, or Bob. I wished it wouldn’t happen, but I also knew I couldn’t control it,” Fagan recalls.

Gradually he began to sink into grief, threw it into alcohol and cigarettes. Days passed and she just planned life without him husband her. So 4 months passed. Gradually she came to accept what was happening and while Bob’s condition continued to deteriorate. He then suggested that she start looking for a new partner while he was still alive. “You were always happier in a relationship than on your own. I want this again for you and the kids. You deserve love in your life, just like they do,” Bob told her, Deirdre said in an interview with Newsweek.

The new acquaintance

And then Dave came into her life. The pair of met for the first time in 2021 and immediately felt attracted and started spending more time together. “Dave was great with kids, letting our 4 year old daughter paint smiley faces on his lap and fixing our son’s bike. He made various things in our house to make our life easier. He even installed a ramp in our kitchen for Bob’s wheelchair,” she said.

As much as Fagan worried about her feelings, Bob wasn’t jealous. On the contrary, he encouraged his wife’s feelings. “Dave had become our personal joke with Bob. And he knew that if I could love Bob like that, I could love him like that. And now I love him like that,” she said.

In Bob’s last moments everyone was there. And Dave. In fact, his death brought them closer. Today they have been married for 7 years and inseparable for ten. “Bob was the first love of my life, Dave is the second,” she told Newsweek.