The Saddest Story in the World.

Intermixed with all the sweet and beautiful final wishes some people have, there are some truly twisted ones. File this under the latter.

NORTH READING - Marilyn Coyne survived the Depression with little food and no heat in her parents' flat in Portland, Maine. She married and sent four kids to college. She saw her husband and one of their children die. And, in November, after three years of fighting breast cancer, she was told by a doctor that she had months to live.

In hospice care and losing weight in recent weeks as the cancer crept through her body, she confided to a hospice volunteer that she had a last wish, something that recalled summer nights of her childhood and joy with her husband. She wanted a final square dance.

Yesterday, her wish came true. Coyne donned a floral skirt, a crimson petticoat, and a red peasant shirt, and walked to the center of a nursing room social hall, where nine professional square-dancers, dressed in cowboy shirts and calico, waited for her.

It had been a decade since she last clasped hands with a partner, but as music played, the elfin Coyne deftly followed the dance caller's instructions of allemande left, promenade, and do-si-do. After five minutes of swinging her partner, and singing along with "She'll Be Com ing 'Round the Mountain," Coyne let her thin, 82-year-old frame fall into a padded wooden chair and took a deep breath.

"That," she sighed, "was wonderful."

then she made sweet love to her 30 year old male nurse.