‘I always thought that I would go before her’

Charlie Fulton misses his wife, Earline, who died of cancer in 2015.

“I met her in a bar at the Holiday Inn back in ’73. I was sitting there, and she was on a barstool. I said, ‘I’m going to walk over there and talk to her.’ That was it. If she were still here, we would have been married 42 years on Aug. 10.

“We had many wonderful years together. We had an antique business. We’d go to auctions all over Houston. Man, my wife, she had a hard time holding back her hand. But she knew what everything was. She was an expert on it.

“She died Jan. 22, 2015. The hardest part for me is that I always thought I would go before her. I was 10 years older, so that was the toughest thing to accept.

“We were together all the time. When you’re happily married like that and you’re best friends, it’s not easy. It’s getting better, though, little by little.”

— Charlie Fulton, 81