Featured Image Credit: Instagram / @deirdre_fagan
Topics: Real Life
Emma Guinness
People often make preparations before their life comes to an end, and for one husband, that meant finding his wife a new lover.
Deirdre Fagan's husband Bob was diagnosed with a terminal illness - amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) - and given two to five years to live when he only 43.
Deirdre, who had already lost her father and brother, told Insider: "It was as though somebody pulled up in the driveway and said he'd been killed in an accident.
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"I mean, the news hits you in the same way."
The pair met while studying at the University of Albany and went on to have two children together before Bob was diagnosed with the progressive neurodegenerative disease in 2011, 11 years after they'd married.
Deirdre, who has now written a memoir about the pair's extraordinary relationship, said the knowledge that she would be widowed hit her hard as her parents and siblings had already passed.
"I loved him so much and he was so central to my life and always will be, so it made me sad that he would just be stories for somebody else, and they could never know him themselves," she said.
She realised that her next partner would never be able to meet some of the most important people in her life and sunk into depression after Bob's diagnosis.
But he was determined to make sure that she would be OK without him and suggested she found a new partner while he was still alive.
"You have always been happier in a relationship than not in one," he told her, Deirdre recalled to Newsweek. "I want that for you again, and for the kids."
With her dying husband's blessing, Deirdre allowed herself to fall for her coworker Dave, who even helped out with some of Bob's care as his illness progressed.
She said: "Dave was great with the kids - he let our four-year-old daughter draw smiley faces on his knees, and he fixed our son's bicycle.
"He helped in concrete ways and fixed various things in our home to make our lives easier. He even installed a ramp in our kitchen for Bob's wheelchair."
While Deirdre worried that Bob would become jealous of Dave, she said he never was, and they joked about the pair's blossoming relationship.
"Dave knew that if I could love Bob like that, I could love like that. And I now love him like that," Deirdre said.
Bob sadly went to pass away in 2012, and Dave was present as the family gathered at his bedside to say their goodbyes.
While Deirdre had grown close to Dave before her husband died, she said that the pair never kissed until he had passed, and they have now gotten married.
"Bob was the first love of my life; Dave is the second," she said.