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Mary and Earl Myatt at a wedding in July. The Oneida couple died after standing in the path of an oncoming train Sunday. Mary Myatt had suffered a brain aneurysm and was struggling to recover.

(Provided photo )

Earl and Mary Myatt met at a party when they were 17.

"It was one of those instant loves," said their son, Brad Myatt, 30.

His parents were married for 42 years.

Their marriage and lives ended Sunday when they stood in the path of a CSX train in the Oneida County town of Verona. They were both 59.

Earl and Mary Myatt, of Oneida, were hardworking parents who doted on their children and then their grandchildren. He loved to golf. She loved to fish and make sandcastles at Verona Beach.

But their story is one where the complications of age and illness came early: Mary Myatt had a brain aneurysm in January, her son said.

She spent a month in intensive care at Upstate University Hospital, Brad Myatt said. Mary Myatt had multiple surgeries on her skull. The last was two weeks ago, her son said.

Mary Myatt wasn't the person she had been before the aneurysm. She would start a conversation and get lost. She didn't always understand what was happening around her. She struggled to use the bathroom on her own.

She was frustrated, her son said.

Mary Myatt was Earl Myatt's life. And her frustration was his, too, said their son.

Brad Myatt said his father was devastated by his mother's illness and had become depressed.

But he didn't sway from her side.

The Myatts were working people. Both had jobs at Mohawk Valley Community College at the bookstore; Earl worked in Utica and Mary worked at the Rome campus.

Earl Myatt would go to work at 3:30 a.m. when his wife was in the hospital in Syracuse so he could spend the rest of his day with her. And when she was moved to the Oneida Healthcare Extended Care Facility at the end of February, he would still go to work before dawn so he could spend the end of each day with his wife.

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The couple's four grandkids weren't allowed at the Oneida facility, so Earl Myatt took Mary to visit them every Saturday and Sunday. First they would go to their older son Brian's house to see his son and daughter. Then they would go to Brad's house to see his two girls.

Before her illness, Mary Myatt was the kind of grandma every kid wants. She'd beg to babysit. She'd have a tea party. She'd paint. She'd play in the snow. And she'd be happy because the kids were.

"It was never about her," Brad Myatt said. It was about the kids. And when he and his brother, Brian, were growing up, Mary Myatt's life - and Earl's too -- was about them.

Mary and Earl would drive six hours to see one of the boys golf or play basketball for a fraction of that time. They were the parents that didn't miss a game.

"We were spoiled in receiving two fantastic parents," Brad Myatt said. He was the last person to talk to his parents.

Earl Myatt called Brad Sunday afternoon.

He put Mary Myatt on the phone. "I said, 'I'll see you soon,'" Brad recalled. He couldn't understand his mother's response, which wasn't uncommon. Then Earl Myatt got on the phone.

"He just said he loved me and he was sorry," Brad Myatt said. He knew something was wrong. He begged his father to tell him where he was, but Earl Myatt hung up.

What Brad Myatt wants people to know, more than anything, was that his father was a good man who worked hard and asked for nothing in return. And Mary Myatt was Earl Myatt's everything. Earl Myatt wasn't acting rationally, his son said, but he was acting out of love for the woman who had been by his side for four decades.

"She was his world," Brad Myatt said.

On Sunday, when Earl Myatt took his wife of 42 years to the train tracks, he wasn't himself, Brad Myatt said. He was a man who thought he was losing his everything.

Brad Myatt has called to tell the train's driver how sorry he is for what happened.

No one knows what Mary Myatt wanted. She could still lift her saucer at her grandkids' tea parties. But she needed help for even the simplest tasks of daily life.

Her life, her son said, was about everyone else's joy. It was never about her.

Earl and Mary Myatt, who fell in love at 17, left life the way they lived it: Together.

Contact Marnie Eisenstadt meisenstadt@syracuse.com or 315-470-2246.

