A poignant tale of love and illness ends in tragedy

His was a love story,Charles Snelling wrote — a tale of a shiftless dreamer and the woman who saved him,of the life they built over six decades and the disease that stood no chance of erasing it. By the end,he said,their time together had become a case study in reciprocity. “She took care of me in every possible way she could for 55 years,” Snelling wrote of his wife,Adrienne,months before their 61st wedding anniversary. “The last six years have been my turn,and certainly I have had the best of the bargain.”

On Thursday,months after contributing a poignant essay to The New York Times about navigating a six-decade marriage upended by his spouse’s Alzheimer’s disease,Snelling killed his wife and himself,his family said in a statement. Snelling shot himself,the coroner said. The ruling on his wife’s death was pending. Both were 81. The family said he had acted “out of deep devotion and profound love.”

In his 5,000-word essay,Snelling devoted the final section to his wife’s disease and his role in managing it. “It’s not noble,it’s not sacrificial and it’s not painful,” he wrote of his caretaking duties. “It’s just right in the scheme of things. After all,this lady rescued me from a fate worse than death,and for a long,long time.”

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Snelling met his future wife at a sophomore dance. “That Adrienne was the girl that I wanted,the girl that I needed to bring into my life,and the girl that I had to marry became very clear to me quite soon,” Snelling wrote. They were married on March 21,1951.

In his piece,Snelling recalled a school creed. “The motto,also in Latin,is ‘Finis Origine Pendet’,” he wrote. “The Beginning Foretells the End.”