Dick Meek, 89, and Shirley Meek, 87, died within minutes of each other on January 16 at Riverside Methodist Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, the family said.
“They never had to go through ‘until death do us part,'” said her daughter Debbie Howell. “They never had to do that because they were together and we are very grateful.”
The couple was scheduled for their first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine on January 19, their father’s 90th birthday. “They were so close,” said daughter Vicci Harper.
The couple from Coschcoton, Ohio, met in high school and have been together ever since. “You read love at first sight and think it is not true,” said the family. “Well, it was love at first sight for my father.” They celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary on December 22.
“They were not the typical 88 and 90 year old boys,” Debbie Howell told CNN. “They were both very, very healthy, very vibrant people with all their faculties. They just fell too fast.”
The couple tested positive for Covid-19 on December 26, after showing symptoms that they believed to be a cold. After several days of symptoms of ups and downs, they went to an emergency care unit for a Covid test and their health deteriorated thereafter, the family told CNN.
Dick was admitted to Coshocton Regional Medical Center on January 2 and Shirley accompanied him two days later, the family said. Both had difficulty breathing.
As their condition worsened, they needed to be transferred to a second hospital. At the time, there was a chance that the two would be transferred to separate hospitals, but the team helped defend that both would be transferred to Riverside Methodist Hospital.
“From January 8 to the end, it just went up and down,” said Howell. “There were days when we were very optimistic that they would pass, but their lungs kept failing more and more each day.”
When the care team told the family that their parents only had a few more days to live, they asked that the parents be placed in the same room. “We didn’t want them to split up because it was the biggest thing in life that they would be together,” said Howell.
“We wanted them to be holding hands. We wanted them to be together. We wanted their favorite song to play softly in the background,” she told CNN. And the hospital staff made it happen.
A nurse made a two-hour playlist of the couple’s favorite songs and played them while they held hands for the last time. Shirley was the first to pass, then Dick.
“The nurse put my mom’s head on my dad’s shoulder. She came over and rubbed my dad’s shoulder and said, ‘Dick, you can go now. Shirley is waiting for you,'” Howell said. “And in a few minutes, he was gone.”
The family said they felt lucky that their parents had gone hand in hand and thanked hospital staff for helping them honor their love story.