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Couple Dies On The Same Day Holding Each Other’s Hands

By Michael Bamidele

23 January 2020   |   10:36 am

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In a love story that is reminiscent of The Notebook, a 2004 romantic drama film, an American couple who had been together for 65 years died on the same day holding each other's hands. Jack and Harriet Morrison died side-by-side at the Woodlands Nursing Home and Alternative Hospice near St. Louis. Jack 86, died at…

In a love story that is reminiscent of The Notebook, a 2004 romantic drama film, an American couple who had been together for 65 years died on the same day holding each other’s hands.

Jack and Harriet Morrison died side-by-side at the Woodlands Nursing Home and Alternative Hospice near St. Louis. Jack 86, died at 3:34 a.m. on Jan. 11. Harriet, 83, died later that evening at 11:53 p.m.

“For over 65 years they lived together, laughed together, loved together, and passed away together. The perfect ending to the perfect love story,” the couple obituary reads.

Wagener said the pair met in 1955 while Jack was driving a family-run charter bus that Harriet happened to be on with her father. On Halloween of that year, they went on their first date.

“They went to a little diner and never separated from that day on,” their neice Sue Wagener told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Six months after, the pair tied the knot on May 5, 1956. Jack made a living running his father’s V-K Bus Lines company while Harriet spent her days raising their two sons and Wagener.

Wagener told the Dispatch how Jack would always make sure Harriet had her coffee each morning and would even wake up before she did.

They were also members of the Moolah Shriners, a fraternal order devoted to philanthropy. The pair would often travel as part of their duties within the order. Fellow Shriner Wayne Price told the Dispatch that ‘you didn’t see Jack unless you saw Harriet’.

Last year, while she was walking their dog, Harriet tripped, breaking her pelvis and hip. She also suffered from dementia and had to be moved into The Woodlands of Arnold nursing home and rehabilitation center in Arnold, Missouri.

A few months after Harriet’s injury, Jack eventually fell, breaking his neck. He was moved to the Woodlands to be with his wife.

Though they lived four doors down from each other in the nursing home, the couple would almost always be by each other’s side, holding hands and taking naps.

In December, Harriet’s condition got critical. She had stopped eating and drinking. Jack also reportedly stopped eating and drinking after Wagener told him of his wife’s condition.

On Jan. 10 Harriet appeared to be close to passing, a nurse told Wagener, and asked if the staff could make room in Jack’s room for Harriet’s bed.

Jack died Saturday morning at 3.34am and Harriet took her last breath at 11.53pm.

They are survived by their other son James Morrison and their grandchildren.