“Every time I see you, I fall in love all over again, Every time I think of you it all begins, All over again.” For most of us, these are just lyrics to a beautiful song Johny Cash, but for Peter Marshall, it was more than that, it was his experience with a true love for his sweetheart Lisa.
In December 2020, Peter decided to take the plunge and proposed Lisa to marry him, while for Peter it was like living in a dream that he never thought would come true, for Liza, it was like life hit a rewind button. Do you also wonder how? Well, because Peter and Lisa were getting married for the second time, but Peter didn’t remember.
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Peter Marshall, 56, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s three years ago and started to forget everything about his life including his fairytale romance with Lisa that led to their first marriage.
“He had forgotten the first time we met, held hands, shared a kiss. He had also forgotten our wedding,” Lisa told CNN.
The Marshall-Lisa love story
Marshall and Lisa were married to other people when they first met each other. The couple met as neighbors in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and forged a friendship. Then sometime later, Peter’s family moved to Connecticut.
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After a year gone by without any contact between the two, they reconnected only when they discovered they were each going through divorces. After one deep conversation, they both became inseparable and fell in love all over again. They remained in an eight-year, long-distance relationship until all their children entered college and got married after some time.
Then things changed
One day Lisa noticed that something was off. Her husband started to forget small, simple things like where the keys were kept, where he was going. Poor Losa convinced herself that this is all because they were getting and old until later when Peter started to struggle in forming sentences and forgot the names of his family members including Lisa.
“It was my little secret to ignore until friends and family members started making comments, too, and then I knew it was something real. People who hadn’t seen Peter in a while immediately noticed something was wrong,” Lisa told CNN.
On April 13, 2018, Peter was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. As much as Lisa wanted it not to happen she knew what was amiss.
“The first time he forgot me was when we were on a trip to Rhode Island,” Lisa said.
“When we were on our way home one time, Peter was giving me directions and then kept saying things like, ‘This is the way to my home. Turn right to get to my house,’ as if I was a different driver and I didn’t know where we lived,” Lisa told CNN.
Lisa kept waiting for Marshall to remember her back, but he never did and then Lisa decided to create new memories with the love of her life rather than forcing him to remember the old ones.
“We talked and spent time together, just like we used to do when we were dating each other, said Lisa.
On December 12, 2020, the couple was watching a TV show, when Lisa started crying watching a wedding scene. Peter laughed initially but swiftly looked at the TV screen and said, “Let’s do it.”
“Do what,” Lisa quipped, to which Peter replied, “Let’s get married.”
Describing the moment, she said, “It was so touching to me. He fell in love with me twice. I feel honored. I feel like a princess, like Cinderella. I’m the luckiest girl in the world.”
It was their children who encouraged them to renew their wedding vows.
And on April 26, they remarried.
Although Lisa knew that Peter could forget the wedding, or who she was during the wedding, she was thrilled with the feeling that she was “his favourite person.”