Unending Love: Husband Holds Hands With Wife Of 60 Years As They Died Hours Apart

For six decades, Floreen and Ed Hale have been inseparable, and even death could not keep them apart.

On February 7, Mrs Hale, 82, passed away in a Batavia, New York, hospital, with her gravely ill husband lying next to her and holding her hand until the very end.

Just 36 hours later, Ed Hale died at age 83.

Hand in hand: Floreen Hale, 82 (left) passed away earlier this month, with her dying husband of 60 years, Ed (right) holding her hand to the end

‘He was a gentleman right up to the end, waiting for her to go first,’ the Hales’ daughter Renee Hirsh told the blog Orlean Hub, which profiled her parents.

A month ago, a wheelchair-bound Mr Hale was hospitalized in Rochester, New York, with kidney failure.

On February 4, his wife was rushed to United Methodist Medical Center in Batavia 35 miles away suffering from congestive heart failure, among other ailments. 

The 83-year-old man was initially too weak to be transported by ambulance to be with his dying wife, but at the request of the family, the two hospitals worked together to reunite the spouses in their last days.

Floreen and Ed’s love story began more than 60 years ago when the two met at a party.

When the young engineer went to Floreen’s parents to ask for her hand in marriage, they refused because the young woman was recovering at the time from a horrific car accident, which claimed the life of her first husband, whom she had married only three months earlier.