Is there a more perfect love story out there than The Notebook? I mean, I don’t care what The Academy say – look over the best scenes from the film and tell me that it isn’t the greatest film ever made. I DARE YOU. I’d hazard a guess that there isn’t a single woman in the world whose heart didn’t spontaneously implode when (spoiler alert!) Ryan Gosling’s and Rachel McAdams’s characters die together at the end of The Notebook. I personally cried so much that I bruised a rib.
But The Notebook fans should get ready to have their hearts broken anew, because somebody has found the IRL Landon Carter and Jamie Sullivan. According to the Liverpool Echo, 80-year-old Billy Grimes and 79-year-old Dolly Grimes married in 1955 and had an amazing eight children together. After 60 years of marriage, the couple who ‘could not bear to be apart’ died together on March 15 in Fazakerley hospital in Aintree.
Billy was taken into hospital in February after a heart attack and kidney failure. Then, only a few weeks later, Dolly suddenly fell ill and doctors gave her only one day to live. When it appeared that Dolly didn’t have much time left, hospital staff moved her into her husband’s ward so that they could be together. I know. I literally can’t deal.
Dolly Maxwell, the couple’s daughter, told the Daily Mail ‘We knew dad was dying but he hung on to see mum one last time. And as soon as she came around the corner he died, it was like he was holding on for her.’ Dolly would die a few hours later. ‘I don’t think either one would have been able to cope without the other,’ Dolly said. ‘Everybody keeps saying how surreal it is that they died on the same day. It is a real-life love story.’
Now go and have a sit down and a cup of tea, watch this seminal scene from The Notebook and try and pull yourself together…
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Picture: Caters
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.