On July 19, David Patrick Roach, the rock singer and founding member of Junkyard, married the woman who had become one of his greatest sources of strength. Surrounded by 20 guests, some wearing Junkyard T-shirts, others simply holding on to hope, he and Jennifer Michael said their vows in an intimate ceremony at the Chihuly Sanctuary at the Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center in Omaha, where Mr. Roach was being treated for advanced metastatic cancer.
“I just want to spend my remaining years — we both do — making up for things I missed out on the last few decades,” Mr. Roach said in an interview with The New York Times on Aug. 1. “I had a lot of unhappy relationships and turmoil.” Those things, he added, were behind him.
“Jennifer’s an exceptional woman,” he said. “We just want a peaceful, happy life together. ”
On Aug. 2, hours after being interviewed, and two weeks to the day after being married, Mr. Roach died in his sleep. He was 59.
“He knew it was happening; our entire day was spent with love and togetherness,” Ms. Michael said via email on Monday. “I fed our dogs hours early so I could just be in bed with him, just laying quietly and calm and hold hands.”
In the early hours of the morning, she woke up beside him. “I knew it had just happened. I turned to him and held him, kissed him, hugged and just held him.”
Since the age of 11, Ms. Michael, now 49, had been telling people that she would marry a rock star. Her initial choice, Jon Bon Jovi, was off the market by the time she reached adulthood. But her adolescent fantasy found new life in December 2022, when a message appeared in her Facebook inbox from Mr. Roach.
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The post A Love Story Cut Short Two Weeks After ‘I Do’ appeared first on New York Times.
