After 63 years of marriage, Dolores and Trent Winstead of Nashville, Tennessee just couldn’t bear to be apart.
On Dec. 9 at around 9 p.m., Dolores, 83, died after suffering a brain aneurysm; the following afternoon at 4 p.m., Trent, 88, died after his heart had weakened from kidney failure.
“I know they are together and happy for eternity, and that is a comfort to me,” the couple’s daughter Sheryl Winstead told Today. “But I never in a million years dreamed I would walk out of the hospital without either one of them.”
The pair would have celebrated their 64th wedding anniversary in January.
When Trent was hospitalized at St. Thomas West earlier this month for kidney failure, Dolores was seemingly in good health. One day at the hospital, she appeared to have fallen asleep in a chair at Trent’s bedside after complaining of a bad headache. It wasn’t until Sheryl tried to wake her up and couldn’t that the family realized something was wrong. Nurses tried to revive Dolores but her brain activity was gone after the aneurysm, according to the Washington Post. They hooked her up to a ventilator and eventually moved her and Trent into the same room.
For their final hours together, the couple held hands as they laid in beds side by side.
The couple has two kids, three grandkids and eight great-grandkids. Their son Eddie was the one who told Trent that Dolores had died.
“I had to lean down next to him, and just kind of tell him, ‘Mom has passed,’” Eddie told ABC affiliate WKRN. “When that happened, it was kind of like his whole spirit just changed.”
He continued, “I told him, I said, ‘Dad, if you want to go be with Mom, that’s quite alright with Sheryl and I.’”
Losing both Trent and Dolores in such a short span of time was undoubtedly difficult for the family, but knowing the couple didn’t have to live long without one another brought them some comfort.
“It’s like God made their travel arrangements and they went together,” Sheryl told WKRN. “It’s just really sweet.”
Watch the video above for more on their story.
