Sam Reck, from Florida, put on full personal protective equipment to say goodbye to his wife JoAnn, after he was transferred to a nursing facility for the treatment of dementia at the age of 86.
“They spent every day together,” Scott Hooper, JoAnn’s son, told Fox 13. “Sam would go to her room every morning and stay with her all day. Every night he would kiss her good night.”
After the coronavirus pandemic, the couple broke up after Florida banned visitors from nursing homes.
“This was devastating for her,” added Hooper. “Her dementia was out of control. She had good and bad days or good and bad weeks.”
Later, the family installed a device in their room so they could continue talking to Sam on video chats and went so far as to record videos for her, which she could see when she was alone.
THE TEXAS COUPLE DIES FROM CORONAVIRUSES WHILE TAKING HANDS, THE FAMILY SAYS: “TO A BETTER PLACE”
“It helped, but she had this packing things up to go home, and that included Alexa,” Hooper explained. “It doesn’t work very well offline.”
He added: “I was hoping that when my mother had problems, they could play [the videos] for her. That worked very well. “
JoAnn started feeling bad last Wednesday and recorded a temperature of 102 degrees. Then she was tested for COVID-19 and came back positive.
“I told Sam that as a 90-year-old man, I shouldn’t go to my mother’s room,” said Hooper. “At first he agreed, but then he said he had to go, regardless of the results.”
“Hi honey, hi honey,” Sam said to him, Fox 13 reported. “You don’t recognize me with all this crap on my face, but it’s Sam. I love you, honey, I love you so much … I can finally hold your hand after all these months. “
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
JoAnn passed away the next day.
“What has caught everyone’s attention is the love story between my mother and my stepfather,” Hooper continued. “But I would love for people to understand the difficulties people with dementia go through during COVID. It’s a worse situation than death.”
