Barbara Brown stood in her Spanish-style kitchen, painted bright yellow with orange accents around the room, and gestured to a framed photograph hung high on the wall.
The photo was of several men and several bulls, charging down the streets of Pamplona in northern Spain. It had been taken in 1998 during the city's annual Running of the Bulls by Brown's husband, Earle Brown, and it won a newspaper contest for "best action shot" for the hobbyist photographer.
"I was a Spanish teacher, and I taught in Kanawha County Schools for more than 30 years," Barbara said. "We traveled a lot - almost every summer for 15 years. We went to Europe most of the time, but we also went to Peru and Guatemala, Belize and Puerto Rico. He loved to travel."
Barbara remembers the last 44 years with her husband as the happiest of her life. She remembers the family's trips to Holden Beach to the beach house that "made them a family" - when they met, both Barbara and Earle had children from previous marriages - particularly the year that they and their four oldest grandchildren watched the Olympics there and decided to hold their own, standing on different stairs of the beach house and accepting their "medals."
She remembers their first meeting, when mutual friends brought them together for a blind date.
"I love my little stories - particularly the story of us," Barbara said.
Earle Brown's memories are less sure. The former director of research and development for Union Carbide, a "Southern gentleman" and "brilliant scientist" with a doctoral degree in pharmaceutical chemistry, can't read anymore. Two falls in the last year, followed by two surgeries to stem bleeding in his brain, have compromised his speech somewhat, though he is still able to tell his wife how beautiful she looks as the two sit in a common room of the Arthur B. Hodges Center in Charleston.
Earle, 78, has Alzheimer's disease. When he was diagnosed in 2009, Barbara called a friend whose mother had succumbed to the disease. Her advice was simple: Sell the house and move into Edgewood Summit, a senior living community near Cato Park on Charleston's West Side.
"My daughter happened to be home, and she always went to the doctor with us for any kind of worrisome thing. When we got home, she called here the very same day about coming up and checking the place out," she said. "That evening, Lydia said, 'Mom, I have an appointment with Ms. Litton in the morning at Edgewood Summit. You're welcome to come.' I said that of course I would go. We told [Earle], and he said, 'Are you kidding me? I'm not leaving this house.'"
Despite Earle's early misgivings, Earle and Barbara soon became at home in their independent living apartment at Edgewood Summit. They were even allowed to bring their dog, a Yorkshire Terrier named Winston who would become the unofficial mascot of the community.
The pair lived together in an unassisted-living apartment until last December, when Earle moved into the Hodges Center, which provides memory support services and is well-equipped to care for patients with different forms of dementia, including Alzheimer's. Now Barbara crosses the courtyard that separates Hodges and Edgewood Summit as much as she can - often every day - to visit with Earle.
The last five years of Earle and Barbara's marriage have been hard - Barbara has severe arthritis, and she recently spent five months in the hospital recovering from a hip replacement and broken femur. As Earle's memory deteriorated, he began to do troubling things. He would roam the halls at night trying other peoples' doors, and once, Barbara found him fully decked out in rain gear in the early hours of the morning. He asked her how to get to Richmond, the city where he grew up.
But every marriage has its tough points, and the Browns had seen tragedy even before Earle's diagnosis. In 2005, their oldest daughter Laura, an audiologist, wife and mother, died unexpectedly at the age of 46. Laura was Barbara's daughter from her first marriage, but there was no distinction for Earle.
"She had some health problems, but nothing that we were scared of," Barbara said. "She just didn't wake up one morning. She died in her sleep. He was just as crushed as I was - absolutely distraught."
Laura's death was the reason the Browns got Winston - when Earle heard that getting a dog might make his grieving wife feel better, he didn't hesitate, Barbara said. So when it looked like she would be in the hospital indefinitely, she couldn't hesitate, and so gave Winston to a family friend.
Earle stayed at the Hodges Center while Barbara was recovering at the hospital. She had hoped he could continue to live with her once she returned, but it soon became apparent that he needed more care than she was able to give him.
"I sort of dumped him there precipitously - he knew he'd have to go over there eventually, but not tomorrow," she said. "I was told I could come back here with a caregiver, or I could go over to Hodges to recover; I stayed over there for three months. That way, he didn't feel dumped with them; I saw him every day, they brought him to visit me every day, he went with me to therapy every day, we ate lunch together - we were just together over there for the whole three months, and that made it so much easier."
In 2008, Barbara was in a serious car accident and contracted a form of MRSA.
"I came within two antibiotic pills of dying," she said. "I had to wonder why I was allowed to live through that. It would have been just as easy for me to die - I was in the hospital from Aug. 18 to Nov. 2, and I still came home before they were ready for me to come. After I realized how close I came to dying and what that would have meant for Earle, because at the time of the wreck we didn't know about his Alzheimer's, I realized that because he was such a good Christian and so willing to serve God that God knew he would need a partner to help him fulfill all that he could be. I will always firmly believe that is why I didn't die."
Barbara describes her husband as charming and bright - so bright that many of his fellow residents at Edgewood Summit didn't know about his Alzheimer's until he left to live at Hodges. His blue eyes are still bright, and he talks with authority, though his speech is sometimes garbled. On the day she goes to visit him, Barbara hasn't been to Hodges in nearly three weeks, after a serious cold kept her away on her doctor's orders.
Sometimes she worries that Earle will forget her. When she sees him, she tells him that it's been "such a long time" since she's seen him.
Earle looks at her and says confidently, "We can fix that."