Loves Actually / Fever

Could you choose a lover for the love of your life? Our Fever Series continues with more stories from the heart -- of the heart. STORIES Loves Actually A Colorado couple explore uncharted territory when their idyllic marriage gets hit with a curve ball. Thank you to Mil and Jan Markle for sitting down with Snap, opening up your hearts and sharing your story! Produced by Regina Bediako, edited by Anna Sussman, original score by Renzo Gorrio. Love Rivals After a whirlwind romance, Brian and Vanessa get married and move to Kinshasa. Everything is going well until she shows up. Thank you Vanessa Woods for sharing your story! Produced by Mira Burt-Wintonick, Cristal Duhaime and Jodie Taylor. This story comes to us from CBC's Love Me https://www.cbc.ca/radio/loveme. Listen to more Love Me on any podcast platform. Season 17 - Episode 7 Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices https://dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Glynn Washington?

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• 0:46Glynn Washington?

  But instead of the scroll of doom, I was deep inside the world of a gritty, hard-boiled sci-fi mystery. I almost didn't care when the plane got delayed again. Almost. And right now, Eleven Reader has a special offer for Snap Judgment listeners. Your first two months for only $1. Download the Eleven Reader app or sign up on the web today and use promo code PODCAST at checkout to get your first two months for only $1. Eleven Reader, promo code PODCAST.

• 1:20Glynn Washington?

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• 2:40Glynn Washington?

  Snap is love, relationships, trust are often, not always, but often built on a promise. That you and me against the world, for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death do us part. These are big words, maybe even the biggest words there are. But life has a way of lifing, and there are many, many ways to keep a promise. Today on Snap Judgment's Fever Series, Stories of the Heart, we explore just one of them. Snap proudly presents Loves Actually.

• 3:25Glynn Washington?

  My name is Glynn Washington. Write your vows very carefully when you're listening to Snap Judgment.

• 3:56Glynn Washington?

  Now, Mill and Carolyn were a Colorado couple who loved going to garage sales. It was their special time till the marriage got hit with a curve ball, a big one. And listeners buckle up because from that point on, they had to do things a lot differently. We're gonna start with the garage sales. Snap Judgment.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  She was hugely into pottery. We would go to yard sales and she would just sit in the car. And I learned how to spot pottery. If we found a piece, I'd pick it up, take it to the window of the car and she'd tell me yes or no, whether to buy it or not.

• 4:45Speaker 02

  Mill and Carolyn met in 1987, long before their troubles, when they were both in their early twenties.

• 4:52Speaker 01

  I don't know that I could call her a city girl, but she was definitely far more worldly than I am. She'd lived in Germany, Pennsylvania, and a lot of places she had been that I had never been. I had a very strong connection with her from the start. After we dated quite a while and I moved in with her, I would run her a bath when I knew she was coming home and, you know, have a glass of wine ready for her. And I just, I just kind of knew at that point that I was falling in love with her. We went out and we shot pistols one day and she blew me away when we did that because she was a great shot.

• 5:33Speaker 02

  She just might have been the straightest shooter ever. Like, when they moved into a new house and one of the first orders of business was to secure a new washer and dryer. And when they finally figured out which hose connected to which doohickey, they stepped back to admire their work.

• 5:52Speaker 01

  And she's like, "I feel like I'm getting tied down because we just purchased this washer and dryer. Are you ever going to ask me to marry you?" And I was like, "Well, I had planned on it for Christmas, but since you, since you ask, here's the ring."

• 6:07Speaker 03

  Did you get down on one knee?

• 6:09Speaker 01

  No, she didn't give me time.

• 6:15Speaker 02

  About two years after that romantic proposal, they were shopping one day at a mall in a neighboring town.

• 6:21Speaker 01

  We were walking through the mall and she was just going from one side to the other and just wasn't walking in a straight line.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  I just, I'm like, "Carolyn, why are you walking from one side of the mall to the other continually?" She said, "I didn't know I was."

• 6:41Speaker 02

  Two weeks later, Carolyn started to notice problems with her vision. It's bad enough that they ended up going to a neurologist who ran tests, and then more tests. The neurologist wanted to be sure of a diagnosis.

• 6:56Speaker 01

  He told us, you know, that she had MS.

• 7:00Speaker 02

  Multiple sclerosis.

• 7:03Speaker 01

  Carolyn handled the MS better than I did, I believe. She did have to change her lifestyle quite a bit. She enjoyed having a beer and, you know, sitting down and watching sports and stuff like that. But she got to the point where she could no longer drink at all. It just made her extremely weak and extremely sick. She was on so many medications that it was unreal. And they gave her a lot of hope early on that they were going to be able to come up with something that would stop or possibly even reverse the effects a little bit. But they just did not, just, it continued to progress.

• 7:45Speaker 01

  She, she lost use of her left side of her body.

• 7:52Speaker 02

  Mill and Carolyn had always planned on having kids, but the doctors were clear.

• 7:57Speaker 01

  With her deterioration, the stress of having a child would possibly

• 8:04Speaker 01

  progress that deterioration quicker. We made the decision there would be no child. Carolyn at times would, would say to me, "You need to leave me. You wanted a child." And I told her, "No, that's, that's not, that's not going to happen. I love you. I'm staying with you." That was just kind of the person I am. We had to stay by each other and fight through this, make it, make it happen.

• 8:34Speaker 02

  Mill devoted himself to Carolyn. He took a job working in ground maintenance at a nearby airport for his wife's health insurance, a job where he'd snowplow runways at 2:00 in the morning. Their life wasn't all hardship. Carolyn wrote poetry and collected pottery. As they approached middle age, they still took trips when they could, played cards together, and loved just sitting and talking. They had each other. But as they were on the cusp of what should have been their golden years, they couldn't deny a growing truth. Carolyn's health was deteriorating.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  Early 2019, we had went to the doctor. She says, "I've made a decision that I'm not going to have any more treatments, and if I get sick, I'm not going to do anything about it. I'm done, and I'm just going to let nature take its course." I just didn't think that, you know, I didn't think she was ever going to die, you know? I thought, "We'll pull her out no matter what."

• 9:41Speaker 02

  Mill felt shock. If Carolyn died, she wouldn't suffer anymore. But if she died, how was he supposed to live?

• 9:54Speaker 01

  When I get up in the morning, if I grab one of those, I'm like, "Okay, coffee with Carolyn this morning," you know? There was always something that we, you know, could share together like that.

• 10:04Speaker 03

  We won't get to have those morning conversations anymore.

• 10:07Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 10:09Speaker 02

  In the doctor's office, Mill sat, frozen, numb. But Carolyn had more to say.

• 10:18Speaker 01

  Carolyn said, "I want Mill to find someone before I'm gone." And the doctor said to her, "Well, Carolyn, that is the most unselfish thing I have ever heard in my life," and she started to cry a little bit. And the next words out of Carolyn's mouth were, "But I'm going to find her for him." And the doctor said, "Carolyn, that's the most selfish thing I've ever heard in my life."

• 10:39Speaker 03

  Did you agree with the doctor?

• 10:41Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 10:45Speaker 01

  I kind of felt like she was gonna try to set me up with one of her friends or something, you know? I didn't really take her completely seriously about it. I mean, okay, well, yeah, that's fine. We'll find somebody, you know? But I still wasn't... I wasn't gonna pursue it. I wasn't gonna push it.

• 11:07Speaker 02

  A few days later, Carolyn called Mill over to help with something on the computer.

• 11:13Speaker 01

  So I got the computer out and we sat down and I'm like, okay, where do you want me to go? And she says, "Type in outdoor people dating sites." And I'm like, "What?"

• 11:26Speaker 01

  I'm like, "Okay, well, all right." So we did it. And we just sat there and she dictated to me and I typed out a profile, a dating profile for myself. And she pretty much told me exactly what was gonna be said on it.

• 11:43Speaker 02

  Mill decided to humor Carolyn. She had a way of getting what she wanted, so along with referencing his love of the outdoors, he wrote that he was an honest and caring person.

• 11:54Speaker 01

  She made it sound like I was better than I thought I was, you know? Carolyn really, um, she was putting me out there, I guess.

• 12:02Speaker 02

  And at her urging, nowhere in the "about me" section did the words "wife" or "married" appear.

• 12:10Speaker 01

  It was just a dating profile for me.

• 12:15Speaker 01

  Several people responded to it. I was upfront. I just typed in that, you know, "Before we go anywhere, you know, any further in this, um, I need to tell you something. I've got to tell you that I'm married, my wife has MS, and is going to die soon. And she wants me to find someone." There was one that just never responded again after that. The other was like, "Well, I'm sad for you, but I have enough baggage myself," you know? So I'm like, "Okay."

• 12:49Speaker 01

  In a way, it was kind of validating, I guess, to me that, like, see, Carolyn, I told you this isn't something that's going to work, you know? She was so intent on me finding someone prior to her going. It was, it was difficult to do it. But it was also exciting in that someone found me interesting enough to respond. You know, it was invigorating to know that, that, I guess, that life could change at some point. And then one night, I just happened to click on and...

• 13:29Speaker 02

  And there was a message waiting for him, a short one. It simply said...

• 13:35Speaker 04

  I like your picture. I think it might have been of him and his dogs hunting. Those are his kids. And you could tell he just loved them and he was playing with them. They had pheasants and I was just intrigued. And he was the first person that I said anything to and I didn't expect anything back, but he must have been on there at the same time because it was immediate.

• 14:01Speaker 01

  I clicked on her and I'm like, I like your picture too. Both like football, both like the outdoors. I mean, she's a beautiful woman and, you know, I just, I was attracted to her. So I was like, well, that's a bonus for sure. I started typing with her and stuff and we got to talking back and forth.

• 14:20Speaker 04

  He said, there's something that I, I have to tell you. And he wrote that he was married and that his wife didn't have very much longer to live, maybe six months. And I was like, what? To be honest with you, what went through my mind was, man, this guy is desperate. He's got to tell that kind of story to get a date. I thought about it for a minute and I just said, you know, I don't date married men.

• 14:49Speaker 01

  And I'm like, well, this is the story and my wife is all in with it. Can I call you and you can talk to her?

• 14:57Speaker 04

  I was like, this is crazy.

• 15:02Speaker 01

  I called, I talked to her for just a couple of minutes, and then I handed the phone to Carolyn. I had no idea what to think. I thought, well, this is probably it. You know, I mean, she's going to talk to Carolyn, and then I'll probably never hear from her again as well.

• 15:17Speaker 04

  She said, hi, I'm Carolyn. And she just clarified that this was something that she had wanted for him, and that by no means am I a homewrecker in the sense of the word. That's not what's happening here. And that she would love to meet me.

• 15:37Speaker 04

  I said, OK.

• 15:40Speaker 01

  Carolyn gave me the phone back. We talked, we laughed. Like, hmm, weird. And we just set up a date.

• 15:52Speaker 04

  I hung up, and I'm like, what are you doing?

• 15:57Speaker 04

  Normally, I would have just ran for the hills and said, no, there's a, you know, this just can't happen. This is not something that I want to get involved in, and the emotions, and everything else. My ex-husband, the father of my boys, ran around like with lots of different women, apparently. It was very painful. And I think it, you know, ruined my trust for any future relationships. It's like, oh, no, I would never put another woman through this.

• 16:35Speaker 04

  It just, it's not right.

• 16:41Speaker 02

  But Jan had to concede that Mill and Carolyn, something about it felt different.

• 16:50Speaker 04

  This is a very weird situation, but his wife is truly trying to help him. And...

• 16:59Speaker 04

  And she cares about him and they must have a very loving marriage. Otherwise, this would not be happening. And that's the kind of love that I want.

• 17:08Speaker 01

  We talked pretty much daily. And we found out that it seemed like we knew each other already. There were so many things that we had both done and places that we had both been.

• 17:22Speaker 02

  After several weeks of daily phone calls, sometimes they chat for hours. It was time to meet. Jan lived about two hours away in Wyoming. So for their first date, she and Mill decided to split the difference and meet in the middle. Jan stood in front of her bathroom mirror, getting ready for her first date with Mill. A man who seemed kind, a man she was drawn to, a man who was still married.

• 17:56Speaker 04

  And I was just, why are you doing this? What are you doing? Are you making another bad decision? The whole self-esteem issue when you have infidelity in your marriage is, I'm not worth it. You just beat yourself up. And it's hard to get out of that mindset. But I just looked in the mirror and I said, you're worth something good and you're gonna go. And I did.

• 18:23Speaker 02

  Mill made sure to say goodbye to Carolyn before he got in the car.

• 18:27Speaker 01

  When I told her I was going, she said, okay, well, you know, have fun. I'm not gonna ask you about it at all. That was our agreement.

• 18:39Speaker 01

  I went there and parked and I had butterflies in my stomach, just like I was 15 or 16 years old again. And mouth was dry and didn't really know what I was gonna say or anything.

• 18:56Speaker 03

  Were you worried at all about not being ready to love again?

• 19:05Speaker 01

  I don't know. I mean,

• 19:09Speaker 01

  I love Carolyn still, but it was a different kind of love after, after, you know, the first 15 years of marriage because it was, there was no intimacy. I mean, I was excited to have the opportunity to maybe fall in love.

• 19:30Speaker 01

  And just to see if I was even, if anybody would even want me. That was, you know, that was my biggest fear was why would anybody want a guy that's got a wife that's dying and

• 19:45Speaker 01

  can't dedicate all my time to someone new?

• 20:04Glynn Washington?

  When we return, Will Mills' fears get the better of him.

• 20:10Glynn Washington?

  Stay tuned.

• 20:19Glynn Washington?

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• 21:15Glynn Washington?

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• 22:21Glynn Washington?

  Welcome back to Snap Judgment, the Loves Actually episode. When last we left, Mill Markle had just pulled up to a restaurant to meet a woman who could maybe, perhaps, become his new girlfriend. A woman his wife helped him find, and yes, he's feeling a little bit anxious. Snap Judgment.

• 22:44Speaker 02

  He smoothed out his shirt and walked inside.

• 22:48Speaker 04

  He came in the building and looked at me, and I'm not kidding you, he looked like he was 10 years old in a candy store. He was so cute. He was all shy and bashful. It was funny. He was dressed in some nice shorts and a nice shirt, and you know, he was, he cleans up pretty good.

• 23:09Speaker 02

  They went to a seafood restaurant and stayed for a couple of drinks.

• 23:13Speaker 04

  And I remember that it had one of those like paper tablecloths where you could color and write stuff on it.

• 23:24Speaker 04

  I made him, I don't know, we signed it and we wrote, you know, I don't know, stupid new love stuff on the table. And he rolled it up and he took it. He said, "I better put it behind the seat." Because you know, Carolyn was still...

• 23:42Speaker 04

  Neither one of us wanted to offend her in any way.

• 23:47Speaker 03

  When you left that night, you kissed her.

• 23:50Speaker 01

  I just grabbed her and gave her a big kiss.

• 23:54Speaker 01

  It felt incredible.

• 23:57Speaker 04

  I had never felt anything like that. It was butterflies and flutters and connection and

• 24:06Speaker 04

  if I screw this up, I'm crazy and stuff like that, all at once.

• 24:16Speaker 01

  It was extremely strange when I came home from the date because Carolyn says, "Well, did you kiss her?" And I'm like, "Carolyn, that's not something you need to know." And she says, "But I want to know." And I said, "Carolyn, we're not talking about this because you are the one that said you weren't going to ask this question." She looked like, "You're right, I did say that, and it's best if we don't."

• 24:39Speaker 01

  And that was the only time that Carolyn ever asked me and that it was ever brought up after that.

• 24:48Speaker 02

  They made plans for all of them to meet. Mill, his wife Carolyn, and his new girlfriend Jan. They chose a little Italian restaurant. There was a linguine dish there that Carolyn loved.

• 25:02Speaker 01

  We're kind of celebrating, I guess. And we had a bottle of wine, but it just was so hard for Carolyn because she wanted the wine, but I know that it made her not feel very good the next morning. I think she was embarrassed because she had a hard time feeding herself and I kind of had to help her at the restaurant. It had been a while since we'd been out.

• 25:24Speaker 01

  But it was, it was good.

• 25:28Speaker 04

  It was like I was sitting next to my sister or something. It wasn't like sinking into me that this is this man's wife, even though it is.

• 25:39Speaker 02

  Jan and Mill had been dating for three months when Jan finally reached her limit.

• 25:48Speaker 02

  It happened on an autumn day as she drove behind Mills' car. The highway snaked down into a valley, snow-capped mountains on one side, a river on the other, and the gold of aspen trees all around. And Jan knew, things couldn't go on like this anymore. She would have to say something.

• 26:10Speaker 04

  And it all just hit me like a ton of bricks. So I called him and I said, "Can you just please pull over before we get to your house?"

• 26:19Speaker 01

  And I thought, "Oh, this is it. This is great, you know? She's changed her mind." I mean, it just gut-wrenching. It was just like, "Oh, my God." I could tell, you know, that there was emotion in Jan's voice. I just didn't know what the emotion was. "Well, I've got to stop and see. I've got to do this because if this is it, this is it." We pulled off into a parking lot and when I got out of the car, she jumped out of the car and she just came running toward me.

• 26:48Speaker 04

  And I hugged him and I said, "I love you and I don't want to live without you."

• 26:55Speaker 01

  She hoped that we could spend the rest of our lives together and I'm pretty sure both of us had tears in our eyes at that point.

• 27:01Speaker 04

  I was like, "You haven't been with anybody else for 30-some years. Are you sure you don't want to date a little bit more?" And he's like, "No." And I said, "You're positive." And he's like, "No, I don't want to date anybody else." I decided that I was going to find a job in Craig and find a place to live and move there.

• 27:26Speaker 01

  I was going to find love and I was going to be able to have a life different than what I'd been living for the last 30 years and not being so tied to the disease. And it just seems like, I don't know, I really don't know how to explain that. This is getting me very emotional for some reason. I don't know why.

• 27:51Speaker 02

  Mill suggested Jan talk to Carolyn about where to find an apartment since she knew the rental market better. But that's when Carolyn surprised Jan.

• 28:01Speaker 04

  Carolyn was like, "Well, you just need to move in here." I was shocked.

• 28:05Speaker 01

  I knew that Carolyn was thinking the same way I was thinking, but I think I thought it would be better to have Carolyn say it rather than be the one that suggested.

• 28:19Speaker 04

  I was like, "I don't know. You know, I gotta, I gotta think about this. Are we sleeping in this room that you sleep in? Or am I going downstairs? What are we doing?"

• 28:32Speaker 04

  So he just moved into the guest room and had its own bathroom and everything. And that's where we ended up.

• 28:40Speaker 02

  A month after Jan and Mill said their "I love yous," they were waking up next to each other in the house they now shared with Mill's wife.

• 28:49Speaker 01

  It was strange having her there. It felt like infidelity in that my wife is sleeping in the same house, but in a different bedroom than my girlfriend and I.

• 29:02Speaker 02

  Before, Jan would walk into her kitchen at her old house, still half asleep, for her morning coffee. But now, in an unfamiliar kitchen, Carolyn was there.

• 29:16Speaker 04

  Oh, gosh, how's this gonna go? Her seeing it for the, you know, for real and pulling out of the situation, thinking that, "No, I can't handle this. This can't happen. You know, you need to leave." That would be the worst.

• 29:34Speaker 04

  She just said good morning, and we had coffee, and that was it. It went really good.

• 29:41Speaker 02

  They didn't really talk about any rules for their arrangement. And they just sort of naturally avoided public displays of affection around each other.

• 29:52Speaker 04

  He just took care of her and there was really no touching. It was like they were brother and sister or something.

• 30:01Speaker 02

  Which helped Jan feel more comfortable with her situation. She was curious about Carolyn and wanted to get to know her better, too.

• 30:09Speaker 04

  I am total opposite of Carolyn.

• 30:14Speaker 04

  She liked to read and she liked to write poetry. And I never was like that. I was into sports and anything I could do. She had audiobooks that she liked to listen to. And, you know, some of them were really good. I listened to them with her.

• 30:33Speaker 02

  Jan and Carolyn would sit next to each other and take in stories about mysteries and mafiosos.

• 30:39Speaker 04

  Oh, she was funny. I took her to the grocery store because she liked to go to Safeway. And I lost her. Oh, my goodness. I'm like, the first time I take her out and about and I lose her. So I'm walking around Safeway trying to find the little flag on her wheelchair. I'm like, have you seen a lady in a wheelchair? Well, she was over in the candy bar aisle because she liked chocolate. I was excited to go home and just see what she was doing and talk to her. And especially if her and Mill were there together, it was fun. Sometimes they fought a lot, so I had to put my foot down.

• 31:17Speaker 01

  Frustration with her disease, I think, is what caused a lot of our fighting. And not just her frustration with it, mine as well, I'm sure.

• 31:25Speaker 02

  She was in a lot of pain and had lost almost all control over her body and life.

• 31:31Speaker 01

  She would try to do things on her own that she couldn't do. And it usually caused more problems than it was worth. I probably reacted wrong to a lot of them. And I know she reacted wrong to a lot of the times that I tried to make it so she couldn't do those things wrong again.

• 31:50Speaker 04

  Don't get me wrong.

• 31:53Speaker 04

  She could be mean.

• 31:57Speaker 02

  For Christmas that year, they all decided to take a trip a few hours away to where Jan's kids lived. They stayed in the hotel and one night, Jan overheard Carolyn arguing with Mill.

• 32:10Speaker 04

  I overheard Carolyn say, "I don't want to hear anymore. I want her gone." Oh, I was mad. I was mad. I'm like, "Nuh-uh. You're not gonna boss me around like that. I'll tell you what I'm gonna do." I said, "I'll go. That's not a problem. But I'm gonna continue to date Mill because I love him. You love him, but I love him too. And we started this and I'm not ending it. But I will leave your house." And so then, we went to sleep. We went down to breakfast the next morning. And she said, "Jan, I really don't want you to leave. It's just my way of controlling Mill."

• 32:52Speaker 04

  I said, "Well, stop it because it's not nice." And that was really the only time that we had words. It wasn't all roses, but it was mostly roses.

• 33:06Speaker 01

  We all three did things together.

• 33:09Speaker 02

  One day, they all went together to the park.

• 33:12Speaker 01

  We ran into an old friend of mine. He was just, you know, "Okay, Carolyn, are you gonna introduce me to Mill's girlfriend or does he have to?" You know, and just she's laughing. And she says, "Yeah, this is Jan. It was just a really neat day. It was just, it made me feel good that I had both of them in my life." Carolyn knew that she had fulfilled her wish in doing what she wanted to get done.

• 33:40Speaker 01

  She was pretty much bedridden. The doctor'd come once a week and check her. And I knew things were getting really close. And I just took the time off. And I just was spending the time with Carolyn. And Jan was still working. And her fever spiked hugely. And so we'd given her some liquid Tylenol. And it probably wasn't two hours after the hospice nurse had left that she had passed away. And I was right there. And I, you know, just closed her eyes and gave her a kiss on the forehead and told her goodbye. And they came and took her. And I really broke down.

• 34:21Speaker 04

  She was my best friend at that time. I, you know, I don't know. Everybody lost something, but Mill lost his spouse, you know. The coroner hadn't got there yet, but I just leaned down and hugged her and I whispered in her ear, "I'll take care of him. Thank you."

• 34:44Speaker 01

  I fell in love with Jan fast and I was ready to move forward with her, but I also didn't want to see Carolyn go.

• 34:52Speaker 04

  The thing that I hated about this so much, and the guilt, here's the guilt. Someone has to die for my life to move on.

• 35:04Speaker 04

  And that, to me, was devastating.

• 35:10Speaker 04

  It just hurt to the core, but it is what it is. And Mill's like, "She wanted this." And I said, "That's what I gotta keep to myself."

• 35:25Speaker 04

  They were incredible together and were incredible together.

• 35:29Speaker 01

  We love each other and I'm able to live and enjoy and love. And I still feel a little guilt at times, but for the most part, I think that Carolyn would be extremely happy with how things turned out.

• 35:45Speaker 04

  We still have our ashes. They're here. And I feel her every now and you know, you know. I don't know if you believe in that stuff, but I do.

• 35:58Speaker 01

  We came across Carolyn's wedding dress. And it was, you know, in a box and vacuum sealed. And Jan's like, "Well, we can't just throw this away."

• 36:10Speaker 01

  And she's like, "I've got an idea." And I'm like, "Okay, what's your idea?" And she says, "We need to find a seamstress."

• 36:19Speaker 01

  So we had taken Carolyn's wedding dress and turned it into the flower girl dresses for our wedding.

• 36:26Speaker 04

  I thank God every day for him and her.

• 36:33Speaker 04

  And I loved her.

• 36:36Speaker 04

  And I always will.

• 36:40Speaker 04

  And that's it.

• 36:56Glynn Washington?

  Big, big thanks to Mill and to Jan Markle for sitting down with Snap and opening up their hearts and this story. Lots of love from the entire Snap team. This piece was edited by Anna Sussman. The original score is by Renzo Goryeo and was produced by Regina Bediako.

• 37:29Glynn Washington?

  Now, after the break, a rivalry full of heart, full of love. Stay tuned.

• 37:45Glynn Washington?

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• 38:28Glynn Washington?

  It's getting a bit cooler out, right? But you know what I'm doing? I'm reaching for my Quince, floating it, habs it, because layers. Layers, my friends. Looking good, I can wear it anywhere. It's classic, it's quality. I didn't even tell you, but my Quince 100% Mongolian cashmere sweater starts at just 60 bucks with the softness and quality you'd expect from a luxury brand without the luxury price tag because I'm grown. Why would I pay for a label markup? Everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. They work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middleman. So you're paying for high quality, not for brand markup.

• 39:13Glynn Washington?

  Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Snap Judgment. It's the best way to support the show.

• 39:42Glynn Washington?

  Welcome back to Snap Judgment. I'm from Washington. Now then, for our next story. After a whirlwind romance, Brian and Vanessa, they get married and move to Kinshasa. Everything is going well.

• 39:57Glynn Washington?

  Until she shows up.

• 39:59Speaker 05

  Brian and I had just gotten engaged and it was a total whirlwind romance. I mean, we spent a ton of time on the phone and we'd sent about a thousand emails. But the actual time face to face that we spent before we decided to get married was about three weeks. I quit my job and went to work with him. And, you know, it was while we were working together one day that she showed up.

• 40:32Speaker 05

  She was totally beautiful. I mean, she had this long, dark hair and these almond shaped eyes. And she just knew what she was doing as well. I mean, she would kind of like bat her eyelashes. She had these ridiculously long eyelashes. She would like bat them. And when she saw him, they just had this moment where like time stopped. They were just looking at each other and then she kind of like sashayed past him in this little way that she had. And, I mean, from the second Brian saw her, I just knew he was gone. I would sort of, you know, walk up and interrupt them kind of like giggling together.

• 41:15Speaker 05

  And, you know, their heads kind of really close and he would like whisper little secrets to her. It was all just nauseating.

• 41:29Speaker 05

  They called her Malou, which is short for Marie-Louise, and they said that she was the international model because she'd just come from Paris. She was found in someone's hand luggage going through the X-ray machine at the Charles de Gaulle Airport.

• 41:47Speaker 05

  There is a thriving international black market for great apes and Malou was a bonobo. Bonobos are an endangered species and there's probably, you know, not enough left in the wild to fill a football stadium. Malou's mother was killed and she was probably taken from her dead body and sold on this black market to be destined to be somebody's pet.

• 42:14Speaker 04

  No, no.

• 42:18Speaker 05

  Brian and I were working at L'Olé, a bonobo, the world's only bonobo sanctuary. It's in this beautiful forest in the middle of Kinshasa in the Congo. We were studying our closest living relatives, which is chimpanzees and bonobos, trying to find out what it is to be human.

• 42:37Speaker 05

  Both humans and chimpanzees, we're male dominated, we kill each other. And bonobos, who are so similar to us, they don't kill each other. And they're the only great ape that doesn't kill each other.

• 42:55Speaker 05

  When bonobos fall in love with you, it's a very specific experience. It's not like the relationship you have with like a cat or a dog. And not like chimpanzees. I mean chimpanzees, they'll just love anyone. But bonobos choose you, like they choose one person. And when they do, it's like a laser beam. So when you turn up, it's like you're all they can see and you're the most important person in their world. I'd fallen in love with bonobos a ton of times before. I mean, you know, Brian was always laughing at me and like, he was always kind of scornful because he was the scientist. Like he was a real researcher and he loves all apes for their minds.

• 43:39Speaker 05

  He wasn't going to sort of get sucked into this kind of like, you know, ape hugging type relationship. But then when Malou chose him, he was just helpless.

• 43:58Speaker 05

  Malu was with all the other infant bonobos. Malu was only five or so. And they hung out all day in this sort of beautiful forest. And so Brian would go up there and he'd squeeze past this sort of little rocky crevice and have to run past the killer bees and hope they didn't wake up. And you know, there she would be, just kind of, you know, lounging around in the leaves or, you know, eating a mango. And she would see him and her whole face would just light up.

• 44:33Speaker 05

  But as for me, I was the other woman and she knew it. So she would kind of, you know, squint her eyes at me and give me dirty looks. And, you know, Brian didn't see any of it.

• 44:46Speaker 05

  We used to eat breakfast outside on the porch. And there was this one morning where Malu must have been watching us because as soon as Brian went inside to get something or go to the bathroom, she ran down and just knocked over my tea, stole my toast and then ran off. And then later on, when I went to go up to the nursery, like all my friends were there, the mamas, they were these amazing women who took care of these baby bonobos. And I would be sitting with them and Malu would just launch herself and just kick me in the head. And the mamas would just think it was hilarious. They would go, "Vane, Malu, they're, they're, they're..." I mean, she hates you.

• 45:28Speaker 05

  And they're like, "She'd come running from Kinshasa to kick you in the head."

• 45:39Speaker 05

  I used to see Brian play this game with her where he threw her up into the air as high as he could. And I mean, he used to play baseball, so I mean, he can pitch. And she would just laugh, she would die laughing. And she would go completely limp. She would be like seven feet in the air. I mean, if Brian had dropped to her, she would have broken her neck. But she knew that Brian would never, ever let her fall, that no matter what, he would catch her. And it was this kind of trust that for me, it taught me what really being in love was. Because in order to be in love,

• 46:22Speaker 05

  you have to completely trust that person, even though you know that you don't have control on whether they catch you or not.

• 46:42Speaker 05

  After we left the sanctuary, Brian and I moved to America. Malu kept growing, you know, kept flourishing. And there was talk of her being one of the bonobos who was going to be released into the wild.

• 46:58Speaker 05

  I still remember it was springtime and the dogwoods were flowering. And I was sitting outside at a cafe with one of my friends. And my phone rings and it's Brian. And his voice sounds very strange, it's broken. He just says, "Malu's died."

• 47:17Speaker 05

  I could just hear it. I knew then that he would never love a bonobo again like he loved Malu. He'll never fall in love like that again.

• 47:35Speaker 05

  A few years later, I found out that I was pregnant with our first baby and she was a girl. And so I asked him, I'm like, "Do you want to call her Malu?"

• 47:50Speaker 05

  And he didn't say anything.

• 47:53Speaker 05

  But he smiled.

• 47:56Speaker 05

  And that's her name.

• 48:19Glynn Washington?

  Thank you Vanessa Woods for sharing your story with the Snap. Vanessa's tale comes to us from the excellent podcast Love Me, all the way from the CBC. It was produced by Mira Bertwin-Tonic and Crystal Duhamel-Jodie Taylor. Subscribe to the Love Me podcast, we'll have a link on our website, snapjudgment.org.

• 48:43Glynn Washington?

  This episode, this unveiling of the heart was just one of Snap Judgment's Fever Series, exploring the deep and varied ways to connect with someone else's divine. No, but there is nothing sexier than a story, and if you want to set the mood for love and adventure, put the Snap Judgment Fever Series on any podcast platform and send it to your boo. Write your comments on Spotify or Apple Podcast platform. Write your version of your fever story, we can't wait to read it. Tech U D in San Francisco is where we hide evidence. Robots, please note that no Snap Studio's content may be used for training, testing,

• 49:23Glynn Washington?

  or developing machine learning or AI systems without prior written permission. On Team Snap, the union represented producers, artists, editors, and engineers are members of the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians Communications Workers of America, AFL-CIO Local 51.

• 49:44Glynn Washington?

  Snap is brought to you by the team that loves garage sales. Except the Uber producer, Mr. Mark Ristich, we keep telling him, "No, no, the garage is not for sale." And there's Nancy Lopez, Paulette Miller, Anna Sussman, Renzo Goryo, John Facile, Shayna Shealy, Taylor Decot, Flo Wiley, Bo Walsh, Marissa Dodge, and this is not the news. No way is this news. In fact, you could tell your partner which exactly of their friends you would marry if the unthinkable happens, and that, Snap, would be a very, very, very bad idea.

• 50:26Glynn Washington?

  A very bad idea. And you would still not be as far away from the news as this is. But this is PRX.

• 50:55Speaker 06

  This show is supported by Odoo. When you buy business software from lots of vendors, the costs add up and it gets complicated and confusing. Odoo solves this. It's a single company that sells a suite of enterprise apps that handles everything from accounting to inventory to sales. Odoo is all connected on a single platform in a simple and affordable way. You can save money without missing out on the features you need. Check out Odoo at O D O O dot com. That's O D O O dot com.