A couple that were married for 62 years have died just minutes apart.
Jeanette De Lange, 87, from South Dakota in the US, was living in a nursing home after she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.
She sadly passed away at Platte Care nursing home at 5.10pm on July 31, after a long battle with the degenerative disease.
Her husband, Henry, 85, who had been fighting his own battle with prostate cancer, was said to visit his wife up to three times a day.
When Henry, who was in the same room as his wife when she passed, learned that his women was gone, he decided to go too. He was pronounced dead at 5.30 pm.
The couple’s son, Keith told reporters what he said to his father before he passed: “I told him, you don’t have to fight anymore, if you want to go you can”.
The couple passed away within 20 minutes of each other.
This story is at both times incredible and really sad. It also follows a long string of other similar stories.
This phenomenon is actually well documented. It is known as the ‘widowhood effect’ and is considered by social scientists to be “one of the best documented examples of the effect of social relations on health.”
Previous research, conducted by Christakis and Elwert, shows that within the three months after one spouse dies, the chance that the other will follow is between 30 to 90 percent.
The research further shows that there is an 18 percent increase in “all -cause mortality” for men if their wives die first. If husbands die first, the risk for women is 16 percent.
But why?
Well, it’s known as “broken heart syndrome”, or takotsubo cardiomyopathy, which basically means the heart can just stop beating following a traumatic emotional loss.
