Elderly couple dies holding hands after 62 years together

Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

 

A Texas couple left the world last month the same way they began their relationship 62 years ago — holding hands.

Thomas and Delma Ledbetter, of Lake Jackson, died less than 90 minutes apart on April 21. KPRC 2 in Houston reported that the couple ended up in a nursing home after they fell ill within days of one another. Delma Ledbetter fell ill first, followed by her husband.

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“We got him over to the nursing home with mama,” the couple’s daughter, Donetta Nichols, told the news station. “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.”

Tom Ledbetter died a short time later. His wife followed not long after.

“I mean, it was exactly how they wanted to go,” Nichols said. “It couldn’t have been any better.”

Nichols explained that her parents were introduced by a mutual friend in Florida, where Tom Ledbetter was stationed in the military. Their first date happened when Delma Ledbetter accompanied him as he moved his car one day.

“They drove around two, three different blocks or whatever, and they came back, and they parked, and he said he reached over, and he grabbed her hand, and he said, ‘I don’t know what made me do it,’” Nichols told KPRC 2. “He said, ‘I just reached over and gave her a kiss on the cheek.’”

The couple married three weeks later. Over the years, they had two daughters, seven grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.

In their later years, they traveled the country together, camping at a variety of campsites, their joint obituary said.

“Their love was a testimony to many, and was surely a match made in heaven,” the death notice read. “Although the family is filled with sadness, they are left with many loving memories until the time comes that they are all together again.”

People on social media were inspired by the Ledbetters’ love story, posting about the couple’s devotion — in multiple languages.

 

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kokoda - the most deplorable
kokoda - the most deplorable

+100

Norman Franklin

This article made my wife a little misty, not an easy thing to do. kudos.

Ghost

I wanted to straighten Dad’s nightshirt. My husband and I visited his elderly aunt in a nursing home last week. I popped into the dining room and played a song or two on the piano and was reminded of the tragic waste of loving humanity our society simply casts aside into elderly care when a couple of them reached out to touch my hand when I finished playing and walked out of the area.

I am misty too, norman franklin. My Poppa G. was my full-time job the last months of his life.

Norman Franklin

That is nice you had the opportunity to do that for him. We are planning on bringing my mom here to be with us when she can no longer fend for herself.

Ghost

Not “nice” norman… the only way to treat my husband’s precious father when his life was broken by despair and sickness. Thank you though for making plans for your own dear mother. It is NOT easy. But it is worth it.

Few things are worth the effort we make.

IndenturedServant

Awesome story!

Life sure is strange. My father was absolutely devoted to my mother for 52 years spending much of that time as her caregiver because she refused to listen to doctors or even common sense and ended up paralyzed due to strokes. Dad was diagnosed with lung cancer in March of 2016 and not once did my mother ask him or anyone else about his cancer, treatment or anything else. She never showed any empathy or concern for him that last year.

A day before he died she called me saying she wanted to come to the hospital to see him. I told her I’d pick her up on the condition that she had to be nice. She had been so verbally abusive towards him in his last months that my brother moved him into his own home with dads consent of course. In response to my admonition that she had to be nice she told me to shut the fuck up and that was the end of that. When dad woke up for his last coherent hours on Earth we asked if there was anyone else he wanted to say goodbye to? He looked around the room and said no.

Fifty two years of love and devotion and she never gave two shits about him. He never said a cross word about her over that time and just soldiered on doing his best by her. In the end he was thoroughly perplexed that he could never “figure her out”. It pissed me off because I see it as her wasting his life but apparently he derived some value from it as he honored his vows.

She has since told us kids that she never loved any of us and even took the time to let each of us know that she has no sons and that we are not to address her as our mother. She still expects us to be at her beck and call though.

WIP
WIP

That sucks. My grandfather left a will that said each of his sons gets $1 each because that’s all they’re worth.

kokoda - the most deplorable
kokoda - the most deplorable

IS….sad and depressing; hope your family members mentally survived that person which refused to be a real wife and mother. What a bitter and wasted human.

Ghost

I saw several elderly women who were so very bitter and spiteful at the nursing home when caring for my Poppa G. The nurse told me that a percentage of elderly women seemed to be prone to that type of senility. My heart almost broke when I saw a loving daughter who was “in the trenches” with me regularly at the facility on the receiving end of a vicious attack by her aged mother. Her mother grew ever more demanding as my comrade tried to “handle” her mother in a kind way. When she and the doctors determined mediation to sedate was required for the continued ability to have her in the “regular” side* I was relieved for us all. Since the narcissistic ego inside will completely obscure any sense of compassion for one’s fellow man if allowed, her meanness and spiteful behavior could easily target any passerby and she tried to harm my Poppa more than once. I think she was jealous that I was able to be there almost all day, while her own dear daughter came only before and after work.

*Regular side refers to the nursing home and rehabilitation wing most have. Many elderly care homes also have a dementia wing where those mindless souls who might harm themselves or others are stashed, unseen. I was only cursed with one brief glimpse into that nightmare wing late one night when I was wandering the hallways trying to find someone to talk to for a few minutes. I “met” a man who’d somehow come through the doorway into the real world. I managed to guide him to the nurses’ station and she and I walked him back to his room. I do not even want to share what I saw in that hallway, but I also might never forget it. I have asked my son to help me die with dignity should he be faced with placing me in such a situation.

To end on a humorous note, he volunteered to do it right away.

WIP… this was a response to your story, which catalogs the anguish that forces children to make terribly hard decisions that others see from a distance as uncaring, when, in fact, those decisions are the kindest way to go for all concerned.

deplorably stanley
deplorably stanley

I was a gardener at at retirement community for years, we had many couples who had been married 50 or 60+ years, they were something to behold.

The spirit of what two humans committed together can do is an awesome enterprise of union.

BB

Indent Service , I give you a hard time because I enjoy Fucking with you.You can hate me but at least I pay you some attention.Sometimes when you or some other Meathead like you shares his story I realize how very blessed I have been in life.One thing I have always known is my mother’s love.
I now understand why you want to watch the world burn.

Flashman

Break my heart why don’t ya.

Ghost

One day a visiting pianist played a waltz and I got to dance with my Poppa G by rolling his wheelchair around the room. It was, perhaps, the most poignant memory of my life, bypassing the birth of my son by far.

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