Couple did everything together in life, death
By Diane Bell, UNION-TRIBUNE COLUMNIST
Saturday, July 17, 2010 at 12:02 a.m.
Patricia and Lou DeMuro had a 62-year bond. The couple were inseparable, a team. They could complete one another’s sentences. She could pick out exactly what he wanted on a restaurant menu without him saying a word. He shopped for groceries. She cooked. They never bought a dishwasher because they valued their special time chatting while they washed dishes together.
In gradually failing health, the DeMuros moved from Illinois to a La Mesa retirement home last month to be near their daughter, Jan Griffin, her husband, Rick, and their children.
Shortly after they arrived, though, Lou, who suffered from Parkinson’s disease, leukemia and diabetes, was hospitalized. Not long after he was released to convalesce at home, Patricia was hospitalized with heart problems and pneumonia.
On June 27, Lou was ferried to the hospital via ambulance to visit her. Nurses rolled his gurney next to her bed. They eyed each other in silent communication, smiled and held hands. Eventually, she removed her oxygen mask and said to her husband of six decades, “I love you. So long. I’ll see you in another place.” Even their nurses brushed away tears.
Lou didn’t sleep well at home that night.
At 1:20 the next afternoon, his wife passed away. An hour or so later, family members came to the retirement home to deliver the sorrowful news to Lou. But he wasn’t awake. His caregivers informed them that, at about 1 p.m., his breathing had changed remarkably and become irregular. Lou never regained consciousness and was pronounced dead at 6:45 p.m., less than 5½ hours after his wife had died.
The couple could be together once again.
“It was a gift,” says Jan, who calls it a storybook ending indicative of the strong bond shared by her parents. “This was the way it was supposed to be.”
Diane Bell’s column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. diane.bell@uniontrib.com
|