When told that a partner has just days — maybe hours — to live, few couples would think to hold a wedding. Then again, if someone told B he couldn’t do something, he’d prove them wrong.

So, in January, B married his love of 21 years, L, from his hospital bed at Asante Three Rivers Medical Center. He had been admitted just days earlier with end-stage leukemia. L mentioned that she had wanted to get married for both legal and emotional reasons. “It was something left that we needed to do,” she says.

But doctors worried B might not make it through the night.

Ashley, a nurse on the A/B Unit, had an idea: “Let’s make this happen.” In a matter of hours, the care team was transformed into wedding planners.

A hospital chaplain went to the courthouse to get the paperwork that would make it a legal marriage. She also tracked down the couple’s longtime pastor, Frank, to perform the service. The couple’s children – ranging in age from 32 to 11 – along with B’s parents, were invited.

Nurse Maci drove to Safeway to pick up roses and baby’s breath. Float sitter Kyle, a former florist, arranged them into a bridal bouquet and boutonnieres.

L suddenly remembered that a dress her daughter had worn to a high school formal was still in her car.

“I never would have picked a green wedding dress,” she says. But it was fitting. It matched B’s hospital gown, sort of. It also paid tribute to B’s lifelong career as a plant lover and nurseryman, which he began right out of high school.

The couple met in the 10th grade when both attended high school in Grants Pass. L remembers the meeting vividly.

“He had the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen,” she recalls. “I thought, wow, he’s cute.”

They dated for a few months, then went their separate ways, as teenagers do. In 2001, 15 years after high school, L was recovering from a neck injury and worried about mowing her grass. She called the nursery down the road. The man who answered the phone said he’d be there shortly.

When he arrived, L was stunned. It was B. Neither knew the other was just down the road. Whether coincidence or kismet, the surprise meeting brought the couple back together for good.

They moved to Brookings, opened a nursery and estate maintenance business, and started their family. As his children tell it, he was a dad who would do anything for his kids, and one of his favorite things was to bring the family swimming at the river. He was an avid collector of 1950s Americana: lunchboxes, Coca-Cola kitsch, and whatnot.

“If someone said he couldn’t do something, he’d do it just to show them,” says one of his daughters.

He was an excellent driver who routinely ran out of gas because he’d forget to check the gauge.

“It’s an adventure,” he’d tell the family. “You’re going to meet someone new; they’re going to help you and you’ll be glad.”

That philosophy held true right until the end, when B and L said their “I do’s” in a hospital wedding created by their new friends at ATRMC. During the ceremony, the care team cried right along with the family.

“It was the happiest and saddest day of my life,” L says. “I said, ‘Til death do us part,’ but he’s never going to leave me.”

B died surrounded by family at 7:57 a.m. on Friday. He was 53.