This is an opinion column.

Liz Slive went home Thursday morning, and I just know Mike Slive was there. Waiting for his girl, the way he did at the Hanover, N.H., bus station when she would ride the Greyhound nine hours from New York City for a weekend visit. Wearing his favorite leather hat, the one they bought on a trip to Monterey. Smoking a good cigar because he knows she knows the difference.

Mike would have one more surprise for his bride as they reunited in a better place, four years after he went to his rest and a large part of her heart went with him. He would be carrying flowers, but not just any old stems. These would be the same number and type he’d had delivered to her mother’s house to greet her after an overseas trip with family shortly before they were engaged.

Nine yellow roses to symbolize the September weekend back in the 1960s when their relationship turned serious and began to bloom.

Liz would remember. She did remember so much and so well. How do I know? Because over the final months of her life, before she passed away peacefully Thursday morning at the age of 77, she shared those memories with me.

As if I weren’t fortunate enough to call the late Mike Slive my friend, I got luckier still. I got to sit down with his best friend and walk down memory lane. On 10 afternoons from August to December, Liz and I talked about the love of her life and their life together. Two months shy of 50 years of marriage. Ten years of friendship before. Six decades of adventure and devotion, all told.

She talked and I listened, recording our conversations for the family to have as an oral history of Anna Slive Harwood’s parents and Abigail’s grandparents. Those Tuesdays with Liz, with an occasional Thursday or Saturday thrown in, were Anna’s idea, and like so many of her inspirations, it was the right thing to do at just the right time.

I called her Liz because that’s what she wanted. To so many others, she was Mama Slive, the better half of one of the better men to walk this earth. Theirs was an extraordinary love story. You could hear what he meant to her and vice versa in every word, every gesture, every pause. You heard it in the chuckle of a newly discovered tidbit when she said, “That’s cool that he had a Twitter account.” You heard it again in the prolonged sigh that followed her recollection of his marriage proposal while driving along the Connecticut Turnpike.

“He wasn’t nervous at all,” she said, “because he knew how much I loved him.”

She loved him so much she followed him from job to job and state to state, though she could have gone far in her own profession as a teacher with an undergraduate degree from Cornell, a master’s in education and a Ph.D. in curiosity. When Mike was offered the position as SEC commissioner, he told Liz she had veto power over the decision. She loved living on the Chicago lakefront while he served as commissioner of Conference USA but told him, “I’m going to stop you from being the SEC commissioner? No way.”

And so the gentleman from upstate New York and the self-described “city chick” from Brooklyn moved from Chicago to Birmingham, where they made a home and a difference that will endure. Together they helped turn the Southeastern Conference, starting with the league office, into a family as well as the most successful operation in intercollegiate athletics. The Mike Slive Foundation for Prostate Cancer Research, with Anna as executive director, raises money to fund research and education to eradicate the disease that took her father’s life.

Four years ago. At age 77. The same age as Liz when she passed.

I thought I knew Mike Slive when he died, but that was before I got to know his wife. Before I saw her smile as she described Mike playing Legos with Abigail. Before I watched her wipe away “happy tears” as she said, “He was the love of my life for 60 years.” Before I discovered her own strong mind and gentle spirit so reminiscent of his.

Nobody’s perfect, Liz would tell me as the portrait she painted of Mike gave that impression, but it’s hard to imagine two better people more perfect for each other. If there is a heaven as an eternal reward, Mike had to be there waiting Thursday morning. Liz must have experienced a familiar feeling as she approached.

As she told me on our first visit back in August, about those long bus trips from the city, “I can still remember the warm feeling in my stomach when I saw the sign that said White River Junction.”

That sign meant she had only a river to cross to see her man. Four years after losing him, she has laid down her burden and left that river behind. Mike and Liz Slive are right where they belong. Together again and forever. Amen, my friends. Rest in peace. Amen.

To honor Liz’s memory, her family will hold a celebration of her life today at 11 a.m. at Temple Emanu-El in Birmingham. Donations can be made in her memory to the Mike Slive Foundation for Prostate Cancer Research.