Couple Married For 56 Years Died Minutes Apart

Donald and Rosemary Dix, who met at dance in the 1950s and wrote hundreds of letters to each other before they were married in February 1955, died within minutes of each other in their home in Wales recently.

Mr Dix, a former steel worker, had been suffering from flu when he collapsed at their home. His wife called an ambulance and watched distraught as medics prepared to take her husband to hospital. It was to be the last time she saw him as during the short journey he lost his battle for life. Unaware of his death, Mrs Dix, 76, called their children to tell them of the emergency. But just after delivering the news she collapsed and died. Yesterday the couple’s daughters said losing two parents at the same time had been a great shock. But they said it was a comfort to know that neither of their parents had to experience the trauma of grieving the death of the other. After her mother had called with the news of her father’s collapse, daughter Jacqueline drove to the hospital, where she was told her father had not survived the journey. She then went straight to her parents’ home in Heath, Cardiff. There she found her mother dead on the floor, with the phone off the hook. Miss Dix, 46, said yesterday: "They didn’t know how to live without each other. It seems as if they died at the same time. Mum’s last words to me were, 'Your father has been rushed into hospital, you should come.' I drove down to the hospital but on my way I tried to ring Mum to see if she had left. The line was engaged so I assumed she was on the phone to my sister. When I got to the hospital, the doctors told me that my father had passed away but that Mum wasn’t there. I returned to the family home and that’s when I saw my mum lying on the floor. The phone was off the receiver." She said that despite the tragedy of losing them both at the same time, she and her sister believed it was a ‘mercy’ that neither Mr or Mrs Dix knew the other had died. Her sister Deryl Dix said: "My parents were inseparable. They did everything together. Now their candles have both gone out together."..."People saw my parents as a unit – you couldn’t think of one without the other. Over the last couple of months, they had barely left each other’s sides. Their deaths are so unexpected. We thought Dad was on the road to recovery. And Mum had been planting heather in the front garden the day before she died and was chatting to the neighbors."

Although this story sad, it's also so beautiful. The cause of death has not been released and the couple were buried together after a joint funeral.


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