Henry and Jeanette De Lange both died on Sunday, July 31, just 20 minutes apart in their room at a South Dakota nursing home.
They had been married 63 years.
A funeral will be held in Platte, South Dakota, today for the couple of more than six decades who died just minutes apart, side by side.
Lee De Lange, one of their sons, told CNN that there was a divine quality to having both parents leave this world at nearly the same time.
“We’re calling it a beautiful act of God’s providential love and mercy,” he said of his parents’ passing. “You don’t pray for it because it seems mean.”
“But, you couldn’t ask for anything more beautiful.”
Jeanette De Lange, 87 and suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, died first at 5:10 p.m. as her family was reading the Bible at the time.
“We read Psalm 103. We didn’t quite get done,” said Lee De Lange.
“She passed away very, very peacefully. Incredibly peacefully.”
Lee said his brother told his father, 86 and fighting prostate cancer, “mom’s gone to heaven” and that he didn’t have to fight anymore.
He could let go and join her if he wished, the son added.
Twenty minutes later, at 5:30 p.m., Henry did just that.
His children say they will always remember him briefly opening his eyes and gazing upon his wife before he himself took his final breath.
Of course, this isn’t the first time that a married couple has passed away on the same day, and we likely haven’t seen it for the last time.
Earlier this summer George and Ora Lee Rodriguez, married for 58 years, died a few hours apart at their home in San Antonio, Texas.
They died surrounded by family – and holding each other’s hands – as they left this world and began a new journey together in the next.
Can you think of anything more poignant?
