After a 73-year union, ailing couple finds two hospital beds pushed together offer the best comfort

[DonViejo]

By Tara Bahrampour December 23 at 5:09 PM

For 73 years — through wars in Europe and Asia and civil rights battles at home, through the assassination of a president and the rise of rock-and-roll — they shared a bed.

He’d be gone sometimes, flying missions during World War II and the Korean and Vietnam wars, but he always came back to her.

So now, as he lies in a hospital bed unable to say or do much, she lies beside him.

Like many hospitals, Fort Belvoir Community Hospital, where retired Army Col. George Morris, 94, is receiving end-of-life care, allows family members to sleep in a patient’s room on a foldout couch. But for George’s wife, Eloise, 91, a cancer survivor who has suffered two broken hips and a broken shoulder, that would be hard.

So the hospital made a special exception when they admitted him this month: They admitted her as a patient, too — a “compassionate admission,” their doctor calls it. Standard rooms are normally private, but Eloise’s hospital bed was rolled in and pushed up against George’s — a final marriage berth for a husband and wife who met as teenagers in rural Kentucky in the late 1930s.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/social-issues/we-were-lonely-lonely-when-we-were-apart-and-when-hed-come-home-it-was-just-heaven/2016/12/23/035b3468-c890-11e6-85b5-76616a33048d_story.html?utm_term=.a754fc47b1e0&wpisrc=nl_evening&wpmm=1

[kimbutgar]

1. How sweet

My mother looked like him at the end all shriveled up like that. It was hard to see her that way but this is such a nice thing for the hospital to do.

[Lucinda]

2. ...

[skylucy]

3. My parents have been married 70 years. This photo and story made me tear up.

So kind of the hospital and what a moving photo.

[lpbk2713]

4. Touching beyond description.

Kudos to the hospital.





And thank you for your service Colonel.

[iluvtennis]

5. I love this story. nt

[Silver Gaia]

6. Made me cry... seems like anything that touches my heart makes me cry these days...

beautiful story... thank you.

[Ron Obvious]

7. I alternate...

Pictures like this make me alternate between feeling moved to tears and feeling massively depressed....

Well, 'tis the holidays, eh?

[Liberal_in_LA]

8. k&r

[my2sense]

9. How beautiful n/t