For seventy years, they never slept a separate night. And when the time of the farewell came, neither did death manage to divide them long.

Kenneth and Helen Felumlee met in Ohio, when they were just eighteen and nineteen. From that moment their lives followed the same path, building a love story lasting seven decades.

In all those years there is an episode that tells better than any promise the strength of their bond.

During a night ferry crossing they should have slept in separate beds. They didn't accept it. They preferred to cling together in the same lower bunk bed rather than spend one night away from each other.

It was their way of living love: always side by side.

With the passing of the years there were also difficulties.

Two and a half years before his death, Kenneth underwent a leg amp. Helen, despite being older and increasingly fragile, continued to assist him every day, taking care of him until his forces allowed him. Just three weeks before he died, he had to give up.

On 12 April 2014, Helen died at the age of 92.

For Kenneth it was like a part of his life had turned off.

About twelve hours after losing his wife, he looked at his children and spoke a simple, almost whispered phrase: "Mother is dead. »

From that moment on, his condition deteriorated rapidly.

The next morning, surrounded by twenty-four family members, Kenneth also died. She was 91.

Helen and Kenneth's death were only 15 hours.

Their daughter Linda Cody told that in the family they always had the feeling that it would be like this. They were convinced that when one of them left, the other would follow him shortly after. And that was exactly what happened.

There are love stories that do not measure with great gestures, but with thousands of small shared moments: a narrow hand, a night spent in the same bed even when it would be easier to separate, years dedicated to taking care of the other.

Kenneth and Helen spent almost all their lives together.

And, in the end, their last greeting was also a way to maintain the promise that they had made themselves as boys: to stay one by the other, until the end.

Small Stories