The family of Malcom and Betty Clynch gathered for a difficult double funeral this past Monday as they said goodbye to the Fort Worth couple who had been married more than 72 years.
The bittersweet goodbye was also part celebration because their love story, that they were still writing until their final hours, lives on.
They married when they were just teenagers in 1945. But by their first anniversary, Malcom was in the Army helping guard the Los Alamos laboratories in New Mexico, while Betty was home in Fort Worth.
"Dearest Betty," Malcom wrote in a letter on their first wedding anniversary. "Today doesn't seem very much like an anniversary, just because one person isn't here. Honey, I'd give anything just to be with you for today. It just doesn't seem right for us to be so far apart."
And for every anniversary that followed, and there would be 71 more, they were never apart again.
"You could tell that they were in love, I always thought they never do anything apart," said their granddaughter Jana Elliot Engle who recently found the first anniversary love letter. "That's something that struck me as different. They always did everything together."
"She could talk to anybody and know their life story in a minute. And he was the same way," said daughter-in-law Marva Clynch. "But they just enjoyed being together."
"I think even in death, they did that together," Engle said.
Because after 72 years of marriage, two children, four grandchildren and eight great-grandkids, after Malcom's career as a bricklayer, Fort Worth ISD maintenance foreman, and member of the Mason's and the Shrine, and after Betty's 35 year career at Bell Helicopter, both Malcom and Betty at 90 years old were in failing health. Betty with Alzheimer's, Malcolm a heart problem. And his granddaughter says Malcom knew their story was coming to a close.
"And I don't think my grandmother was going to go anywhere without my grandfather," Engle said. "I think he knew my grandmother was going, and he had to go first."
Malcolm did pass first at their assisted living facility in Fort Worth. Betty died just 10 hours later. And Engle likes to believe her granddad went first to be there, so he could show Betty the way.
"He's a one of a kind man," Engle said.
So in Fort Worth on Monday, Malcom and Betty were side by side in a chapel again. A love story that ended as it began together.
As for their love letters, Malcom always ended them the same way.
"I'll always love only you," he wrote. "All my love. To the sweetest wife in the world. Malcom"
"It tells me how much he loved Granny, how much Granny loved him. They didn't really want to be apart," Engle said.
And so together they go, and in their love story together they will always be.