Relationships

Couple married for more than 60 years die 20 minutes apart

"You couldn't ask for anything more beautiful," their son said.

Jeanette and Henry De Lange had been married more than 60 years when they both passed away within minutes of each other.

The couple, from South Dakota, were married in 1953. They have spent every day together since.

Jeanette, 87, who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, had been in a nursing home since 2011, but her 86-year-old husband visited her every day.

When doctors told Henry he had terminal prostate cancer, he soon moved to the nursing home to be with his wife.

Last month, their children got the call that both had taken a turn for the worse.

“[The doctor] said your dad’s pulse is worse. I wonder if he’ll go first,” son Lee De Lange told KSFY. “About five minutes later, the aid said ‘I think your mum will go very soon’. It was 5:05 p.m. at that point.”

At 5:10pm she passed away.

Two of her children were able to be by Jeanette’s side at the time she passed. They told their heartbroken dad he could stop fighting too if he needed to.

“My brother Keith said to my dad, ‘mum’s gone to heaven. You don’t have to fight anymore, you can go too if you want’,” Lee said.

“He was laying in bed. He, for the first time, opened his eyes, looked intently over where mum was. Closed his eyes back down. Laid back down, died about 5 or 10 minutes after that.”

It was twenty minutes after his beloved wife had left the world.

“We’re calling it a beautiful act of God’s providential love and mercy,” Lee said. “You don’t pray for it because it seems mean but you couldn’t ask for anything more beautiful.”

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