Elderly Couple Dies 90 Minutes Apart, Holding Hands on Their Deathbeds
Married couple stayed together until the very last moment
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When married couples take a vow 'until death do us part,' many don't make that far; whether it be divorce, separation, or even just staying together for the sake of their children.
But this elderly couple followed through on their vows, so much so they stayed together until the very last moment.
Tom, 84, and Delma Ledbetter, 82, married 62 years ago and took their final breaths lying next to each other on their deathbeds.
In what could have been a scene from The Notebook, the husband and wife died holding hands in a nursing home, on April 21, 2017.
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The first to pass away was Tom, then Delma one and a half hours later.
“It was exactly how they wanted to go. It couldn’t have been any better,” said their daughter Donetta Nichols.
The heart-melting photo showed the couple holding hands before they passed away, which was less than 90 minutes apart of each other.
Tom and Delma Ledbetter love story began in their early 20s, during the 1950s.
The couple, both from Lake Jackson, knew each other through mutual friends while living in Florida.
Almost immediately, they knew they would spend the rest of their lives together.
The first date was not typically romantic, which happened when Tom was moving his car.
“They drove around two, three different blocks or whatever and they came back, and they parked,” said Nichols.
“He said he reached over and he grabbed her hand and he said, ‘I don’t know what made me do it.’ He said, ‘I just reached over and gave her a kiss on the cheek,’” said Nichols.
Just three weeks later, they were married.
Tom and Delma, are survived by two daughters, seven grandchildren, and seven great-grandchildren, kept each other company throughout their twilight years.
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They even traveled around the United States, visiting campsite to campsite.
But in 2017, Delma became ill, then Tom a few days later, and eventually, they ended up in a nursing home.
“They couldn’t get a pulse. They couldn’t get a blood pressure. They couldn’t get anything. Yet mama was just hanging on to something. It seems that ‘something,’ was her husband, Tom, as strangely he fell ill shortly after his beloved wife,” recounted Nichols.
“We got him over to the nursing home with Mama. They had pushed their little beds together, and Mama was laying right there, facing him. She was asleep, and Daddy goes, and he reached over there, and he grabbed a hold of her hand, and he just laid there with her, and it was so sweet,” Nichols continued.
Tom and Delma Ledbetter spent 62 years together, and even at their final moments, they kept hold of each other's hand.
Such a story reflects how modern marriages today are not what they used to be, and also remind us that the vow we should keep “until death do us part.”
