This is How I Want to Go

The couple featured in this article from the Star Tribune are the grandparents of a friend of ours. This is the sweetest thing I have ever heard in my whole life. The best part is way at the end, so be sure to read the whole thing, or at least skip to the end.

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Violet and Orville Peacock, together to the end
Darlene Prois, Star Tribune

Orville Peacock called the shots during his 65-year marriage to Violet. Over the years, relatives had grown accustomed to hearing Orville's gruff pronouncements when he tired of the family gatherings that Violet so loved.

"Vi," he'd shout on his way out the door. "The bus is leaving. Are you coming or not?"

Vi would grumble, but she would follow.

On Thursday, Orville died at 93. Violet died the next day.

"It's a love story, if not really a fairy tale," said their son John of Maple Grove. "But the ending was absolutely super. They cared deeply about each other."

The couple lived together in their! Brooklyn Center apartment until December, when 89-year old Violet was hospitalized with circulatory problems.

"That was the downfall of my father," John said. "He felt lost without her."

Theirs had been a marriage typical of the era. Orville earned the living, working as a machinist and grinder at Ford Motor Co. When the babies came, Violet gave up her job as a seamstress to make a home for Orville and their sons John, Tom and Terry.

"She was the one who took care of us," said Tom. "She was the buffer between us and dad."

They were private people, especially Orville. Violet loved to be with her family, savoring weekly shopping excursions with her nieces. She would have liked to play cards with her neighbors, too, but Orville discouraged that. He feared she would get tired if she stayed up too late.

"He protected her almost to a fault," said John.

But as Violet's health became more fragile, Orville became her caretaker, ! cooking meals and keeping track of her medicines.

A few weeks after Violet's hospitalization, Orville also fell ill. His pneumonia failed to improve, and his family put him in hospice care at North Memorial Medical Center. Within hours, Violet's condition worsened, too, and she was put in a room near her husband's.

Even with medication, Orville was agitated and angry, insisting he could not die before his beloved Vi. The couple's grandniece, Melissa Melichar, a nursing assistant who worked on another floor at North Memorial, decided to help.

Melichar knew how devoted Orville and Violet were to each other. For years, she'd done home care for the couple. After finishing her shift, she went to their rooms, determined to bring them together one last time.

At 12:10 a.m. Thursday, Melichar rolled the couple's beds together, arranging the two on their sides, face to face. She put their hands together.

"As soon as they touched, they both settled down," said Melichar. "I told him to open his eyes and look at! her."

Orville did. Seeing Vi, he smiled and squeezed her arm. He died 35 minutes later.

"It was the most peaceful, happy death I've seen," Melichar said.

That evening, Melichar whispered in Violet's ear. Orville has gone, she told her. Are you going?

She died an hour later.