"I've seen her, over these years, alternately buoyed by hope and crushed by despair, with even her faith tested as she awaits the miracle that never comes: Edwarda's awakening," Whited wrote in 1982.

Kathryn would call him often. Sometimes, she'd send letters. Her return address always carried the message: "Hope never dies."

"One of these days Edwarda is just not going to be able to fight off another infection," she said in one of her letters. "But even then, I will be richer for having cared for her and experienced all the love that people have shown her."

The next year Whited penned a different column. In August of 1983, Edwarda's mother said she'd heard her daughter utter one word: "Hey." She was in the kitchen with friends at the time. They rushed into the room.

"You'll never know the sensations that went over me. It was Edwarda's voice. We all ran in. She was smiling, as if she had done something terrific," Kathryn told him.

The next night, Edwarda said "hey" again. Kathryn wept at her bedside for an hour.

Whited asked, what if Edwarda never said anything again.

"I'm so elated that nothing can knock me down now," she told him. "Edwarda spoke. She really spoke."

Edwarda would never speak again. She would outlive the columnist. By 21 years.

The years came and went. Mom remained steadfast, always hoping, always praying. Edwarda had been reading the James Michener novel "Hawaii" when she fell ill during that Christmas in 1969. Mom read it to her more than 10 times over the years.

"It was never a sad place," recalls niece Pam Burdgick. "She always considered it a privilege. She loved having people come and visit. ... You left with a kind of sense of priorities, of how important family is."

While pilgrims made their way to visit Edwarda in South Florida, across the state a very different saga was playing out: that of Terri Schiavo, whose persistent vegetative state became a political, legal and family feud with her husband wanting to let her die and her parents wanting to let her live.

Schiavo, 41, died in 2005 after 15 years in a coma after a judge sided with her husband.

Kathryn paid attention to that battle but didn't cast judgment. She told people that families must deal with such tragedies in their own way -- and hers was united behind Edwarda.

Stephen Mayer, a professor of neurology and neurological surgery at Columbia University, has treated many comatose patients over the years. He says new research suggests that patients in persistent vegetative states may perceive what's around them in a way that doctors didn't previously understand.

"The best evidence of that are people who don't follow commands and appear to be vegetative, but after several years they wake up and start following commands," says Mayer.

Mayer, who did not treat Edwarda, says it's possible "she was perceiving what was going on around her to some extent over those 40 years, but not really able to communicate to us in a way that we can believe. And maybe the daily contact, the voices, the touches with her loved ones gave her reason to live."

"One thing I've learned over the years as somebody who treats people in a coma and tries to save them," he says, "is there's something very important about human contact with the people that bring meaning to your life, your loved ones."

Kathryn believed that to the fullest.

"God has given me the strength to care for Edwarda by sending angels in many forms -- friends, families, strangers who became friends, and many others," she told Wayne Dyer. "God has given me the gift of staying cheerful and being able to help others."

In March 2008, at the age of 80, Kaythryn was found dead on the floor in her daughter's room. She'd cared for Edwarda for nearly four decades. Mom had kept her promise.

Kathryn had worried what would happen if she died first. She wasn't sure whether Colleen could handle the stress of caring for Edwarda. "She can't understand why God did this," Kathryn once said of her younger daughter.

Mom had wondered: Could Colleen stand up to the task?

'A hole in my heart'

Colleen tried to live as normal a life as possible. Yet she couldn't shake her devastation.

Her sister -- her best friend -- lay in a coma. Her father was taken from her when she was 21. Dad had become her confidant. "I always had my dad to fall back on when my mom was tied up with my sister," she says.

It would be too much to bear for most anyone, let alone a young woman trying to find meaning.

She married in 1974, with the reception held in Edwarda's room. She gave birth to a son, Richard, in 1976, just eight days after her father died. Colleen's marriage lasted only six years.

The divorce was yet another bad blow. She and her son moved in with her mother, and her boy became a fixture alongside Edwarda.

"My marriage fell apart and I didn't feel like I belonged anywhere," she says. "That's when I ventured into drugs. I was just trying to belong somewhere."

Her troubles spiraled further. She was arrested on an array of drug offenses in the early 1990s. She was sentenced to nine months in prison at the Broward Correctional Institutional.

Being locked up, she had an epiphany: If something happened to her mother while she was behind bars, Edwarda would have no one to care for her -- all because of her selfishness.

"I went to prison and turned my life around," she says. "I knew where I belonged."

She took a job as a horse trainer, not too far from the family home. Many days she wished she could put Edwarda in her car and take her to the stables.

When their mother died, Colleen immediately quit her job. She suffered from multiple sclerosis but quickly figured out a way to manage her sister's needs.

"My mom worried I wouldn't be able to do it," she says. "But when you love somebody, you can do it. That's what you do for family."

And so she tended to her sister, day and night, for five years until that morning this past November.

"When I was down in the dumps, she would give me a big smile and it would just make everything seem like it was OK," Colleen says. "I talked to her just like I would talk to you."

She still rises before the sun, expecting to feed her sister. Then, her loss sinks in.

"I knew I loved my sister, but until she was no longer physically here I didn't realize how much I would ache," she says. "I feel a hole in my stomach, a hole in my heart."