The story of my great grandfather's lost love

There is a story I remember my mother telling me once about a tragedy that
befell my great grandfather when he was a young man.

The story goes that he was engaged to a beautiful young girl who he had
known since he was very young. They were a wonderful couple and it seemed
certain that they would enjoy a perfect life together. They were the very
definition of soul mates.

Their engagement was to be brief quickly followed by marriage, but war broke
out across Europe. It was the war to end all wars.

My great grandfather was called up to do his duty and this he did with
conviction and courage. The war had raged for a couple of years when his
beloved fiancée received the most terrible news of my great grandfather death
at one of the many now notorious fields in France.

She was inconsolable. She choose to end her own life rather than suffer it alone
with out my great grandfather. She was 19 years old.

Turned out it was a mistake, my great grand father hadn't died at all.

He choose not to take his life as had fiancée; for such a young man he had already
seen a dozen lifetimes worth of death and now every life, even his own now felt so
very precious to him. He decided that the best way to honour his loves passing was to live
a full life taking the memory of her with him.

He never forgot her. He kept a small photo of her (the only one he had)
in his wallet until the day he also died. He was 84 years old.