HOUSTON – A Houston couple that rarely separated and stayed married for 61 years died within 40 hours of each other.
Bernice Stringfellow, 85, died Saturday. Her husband, Wesley Stringfellow, 86, died Monday.
"They did everything together, it's not surprising to me. I wouldn't expect anything else," said Wes Stringfellow, the couple's only son.
Late last week, a hospice nurse alerted the Stringfellows that Wesley, with late stage Alzheimers Disease, did not have long to live.
"I had planned to tell her (Bernice), the next day, but then, the phone call," Wes said.
Unexpectedly, Bernice Stringfellow had a stroke. She passed away the next day never hearing the news about her husband.
Wes Stringfellow is confident his mother sensed what was happening, and did not want to continue without her husband of six decades by her side.
"I think if the future wasn't going to include him, she was not going to be the same," said Patricia Stringfellow, Bernice's daughter-in-law.
It was now time to deliver similar heartbreaking news, this time to the family's patriarch. But Wesley Stringfellow was no longer lucid, or so the family thought.
"That morning when I told him he was just really calm. I just told him: 'It's OK, she's better, it's time, and that was it,'" Wes Stringfellow said.
The Stringfellows will be laid to rest Monday.
