Mary Turrell had been living at England's Easterlea Rest Home for a year or two when Derek Brown arrived; one day, he sat down next to her during a concert at the home and started singing along. When she turned to look at him, he winked, and it wasn't long before he was asking her, as the Guardian puts it: "Mary, will you be my woman?" The newspaper paints a poignant picture of the relationship that followed, which, it explains, was different than most relationships at the care home. While it wasn't uncommon for a certain type of romance to bloom there, those relationships were more about companionship and friendship. This was different: This was passionate.
Indeed, the paper notes, the couple was intimate, and things sometimes got awkward for the other residents and staff—to the point that Mary's daughter and Derek's niece were called in to gently tell them, as the Guardian puts it, "if you're going to do things, shut your door and keep the volume down." They spent all their time together, talking, doing puzzles, going to the home's entertainment shows, watching television, holding hands. Eventually Derek proposed, and they threw a wedding at the rest home. Less than a year later—in February of this year—their story came to an end after Derek took a bad fall. Read the bittersweet tale in full at the Guardian. (More Longform stories.)
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