Eugene is known for being the sweet old man next door. At 74 years old, there wasn’t much he didn’t try to do for his community. He lived in a large two story home that he shared with Don, a 69-year-old man. They had always told the neighbors they were best friends from childhood. The truth was, they were lovers. They had been since they were teenagers. Neither had ever been interested in women and neither had ever touched a woman. Neither had ever wanted to.
They started out just best friends and one thing led to another and they have been together ever since. They finished high school together and even college. They both retired from the same bank where they worked. They lived together since they graduated high school. No one ever suspected (or never said) that they were lovers. They even went to church every Sunday. Neither of them really had any family, Don was the youngest of three children and his siblings had all passed away. He had nieces and nephews but they never contacted him.
Eugene had a sister that lived a few hours away but they never really got along anyways. Their parents had all died years ago except for Don’s mother who died only a few years earlier in a nursing home. They’d both been scared to death the other would lose his mind and forget everything and have to go to a home like that. Thankfully, that hadn’t happened. They loved each other dearly. They longed to be married and be free of the chains of closed minds and doors that held them down.
After being together so long, they both feared they would die not ever having the pleasure or experience of being married or having the dream wedding that they both had always wanted. That was all about to change…They were in the living room eating dinner like they always had, watching the evening news, when a story came on about an older gay couple who had been able to get married recently because their state had legalized gay marriage. They looked at one another and smiled. They had been saving money for years for the wedding they hoped they’d have. Over the next few weeks they planned and bought things for the wedding. They made invitations and sent them out, they invited their neighbors, family and friends. They finally had the wedding they had dreamed of for so long. Sadly, enough, they both perished in their sleep only three months of being married.
Their community had a memorial put in place at the city park for the two, they never knew they would become such an inspiration for their town. After their deaths over forty LGBT couples were married in their city. All because of their will to stay together during the hardest times and become the best of themselves at the best of times. Their love and their lives will be remembered in this town forever and continue to inspire love stories for years to come. The only thing they wished they could have done before they grew so old was to have a child. The closest thing to that they ever have was their pet Parrot Roger. They loved him as much as he loved them and he died shortly after they did, surely of a broken heart.The men were buried side by side in the most beautiful cemetery in town. They were laid to rest atop a small hill surrounded by trees, one of which was a weeping willow, Don’s favorite. They had a beautiful tombstone that they shared. It had their pictures separately and then one in the middle of the two ontheir wedding day. Now they truly were life partners, “’Til death do us part” they said to each other and even in death, they were still together.
