‘Happy Together’ Musician Mark Volman Had ‘Big Smile Even at the End’ (Exclusive)

When musician Mark Volman first revealed the news that he’d been diagnosed with Lewy body dementia, a progressive brain disorder, in 2023, he spoke about the condition with a sense of wonder.

“The challenges of this world affect everybody, and it’s been kind of fun being on the other side of a challenge like this and saying, ‘I feel good,'” Volman, a founding member of the iconic ’60s rock group The Turtles, told PEOPLE at the time.

Volman, who died Friday, Sept. 5, at the age of 78, kept that positivity until the end, his former wife Emily Volman tells PEOPLE. “He had a perspective of abundance always,” says Emily, who remained close to the singer after their divorce and who helped care for him.

That optimism faltered only briefly earlier this year when Volman began feeling so unwell that he had to bow out of touring.

Days before he was to head out on the road in May, he began to feel fatigued.

“Having to stay home was devastating,” Emily says. “He loved doing what he did. He loved being on stage. He loved just being with his people. And when I say his people, I meant everybody.”

Volman had been a performer since high school in 1963, when he and his classmate Howard Kaylan’s formed The Turtles. The band had their first Top 10 hit in 1965 with a version of Bob Dylan‘s “It Ain’t Me Babe.”

After the group disbanded, Kaylan and Volman formed a duo, Flo & Eddie, and toured with Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention and sang background vocals for artists like T. Rex, Duran Duran and Bruce Springsteen.

The sudden turn in his health in May was a mystery. Volman’s white blood count was low and kept getting worse and doctors couldn’t figure out the cause, He was hospitalized about a week ago, but even there, he kept his sense of humor, Emily says.

“A doctor told me that every time anyone came in, he had the biggest smile— even when they were coming to poke him with a needle,” Emily says. “He knew how to work a room. He never lost his playfulness.”

Volman, who was as proud of his academic achievements as his musical ones (he had earned his master’s in screenwriting in his 40s and went on to teach at Belmont University in Nashville), had been doing well up until that point, Emily says, despite the dire nature of his LBD diagnosis.

“The Lewy body had hardly progressed at all,” she says. He even took his continuing hallucinations in stride: “He almost used them as a creative influence!”

She adds: “Cognitively, he was so sharp. He was just so funny still. He would make me laugh all the time. Just a forever performer.”

Volman died in a Nashville hospital in the early hours of Sept. 5, with Emily and his daughter at his side.

Fittingly for one of the talents behind the Turtles ’60s hit “Happy Together,” “even at the end, he just had this big grin,” Emily says. “Literally he was smiling right before. He just was a happy person.”