Tag: love

They matched on a dating site and got married. He needed a kidney, and they matched again.

On By A.P.In UncategorizedLeave a comment

By Lauren M. Johnson

It was a match made in heaven, or at least eharmony told them so. But Lisa and Dan Summers didn’t know how compatible they really were.

Before the Summers met and fell in love after meeting online, Dan, who is in his 30’s, had a kidney condition that was discovered in his 20s.

“I knew about 10 years ago that there was going to be some trouble sometime in the future,” Dan told CNN affiliate KTXL. “And they thought it was going to be when I was in my 50s or 60s, and it ended up hitting last year.”

He needed a transplant, and come to find out Lisa was a match. The odds? One in 100,000, doctors said.

“It’s like being next to a stranger on a train, matching them and then also falling in love on top of it, you know,” Lisa said. “There was like this sense that it was going to work.”

On August 22 at UCSF Medical Center near their home in Auburn, California, the transplant was successfully performed, and Lisa’s kidney was accepted by Dan’s body.

A new outlook

Though the Summers are back to normal with their son Jasper, they have a new appreciation for life.

“Being able to see him in front of me just holding my son’s hand or when he lifts him or those fun moments,” Lisa said. “It’s like there’s an extra appreciation to it, that my son gets to have his father growing up, you know.”

The Summers are now also advocating for kidney donation and are firm believers that the sacrifice can go a long way.

“There’s a shortage of donors that are out there right now and there’s a number of people that are in kidney failure. And dialysis is not a fun thing,” Dan said. “On a live donor they can get 10 to 20, sometimes 30 years if the match is really good.”

https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/05/us/wife-is-husbands-kidney-donor-trnd/index.html

Couple married 63 years die minutes apart in same room

On By A.P.In deathLeave a comment

By Doug Criss

It’s said that love is the strongest force in the world. If that’s true, then a married couple from South Dakota proves that not even death is strong enough to keep loved ones apart.

A funeral will be held in Platte, South Dakota, on Monday for a couple married for more than six decades who died just minutes apart on the same day and in the same room.

Henry and Jeanette De Lange both died on July 31, just 20 minutes apart in their room at a nursing home.

The De Langes had been married for 63 years.

Lee De Lange, one of their sons, told CNN affiliate KSFY there was a divine quality to having both parents pass at nearly the same time.

“We’re calling it a beautiful act of God’s providential love and mercy,” he said. “You don’t pray for it because it seems mean but you couldn’t ask for anything more beautiful.”

Jeanette De Lange, 87 and suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, died first at 5:10 p.m. Family gathered with her was reading the Bible at the time.

“We read Psalm 103. We didn’t quite get done,” said Lee De Lange. “She passed away very, very peacefully. Incredibly peacefully.”

Lee said his brother told his father, 86 and fighting prostate cancer, “mom’s gone to heaven” and that he didn’t have to fight anymore. He could let go and join her if he wished, the son added.

Twenty minutes later, at 5:30 p.m., Henry De Lange did just that. His children remember him briefly opening his eyes and looking at his wife before he died.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/08/us/married-couple-dies-minutes-apart-trnd/index.html

Couple married 75 years die in each other’s arms

On By A.P.In death, loveLeave a comment

A California couple, married for three-quarters of a century, took their “til death do us part” vow seriously, passing away in each other’s arms last month.

Jeanette and Alexander Toczko were born in 1919, met when they were just 8 years old and fell in love immediately, their children told KGTV in San Diego.

The couple married in 1940 and moved to San Diego in 1970, according to their daughter, Aimee Toczko-Cushman. She told KGTV that her parents couldn’t bear the thought of being apart and said they hoped to one day die in their bed, holding hands.

“Their hearts beat as one from as long as I can remember,” Toczko-Cushman said.

Until recently Alexander, 95, was healthy and playing golf every day, their son, Richard Toczko, told the news station.

“He must have fallen. He broke his hip,” Toczko said. He told KGTV that his father never fully recovered and his health began fading quickly.

Unwilling to keep their parents apart, they had hospice bring Alexander Toczko’s bed into the couple’s home and place it beside his wife.

On June 17, he passed away.

“And he died in her arms, which is exactly what he wanted,” Toczko-Cushman told KGTV. “I went in there and told my mother he was gone; she hugged him and she said, ‘See this is what you wanted. You died in my arms, and I love you. I love you, wait for me, I’ll be there soon.’ ”

Within 24 hours, she passed away, holding her husband’s hand.

The couple was buried on June 29.

http://www.freep.com/story/news/2015/07/03/couple-dies-in-each-others-arms/29662581/