The couple had been separated from each other for months due to the pandemic.
Tears filled the room when a 90-year-old Florida man came to a nursing home with full protective gear to say goodbye to his wife before she died of COVID-19.
Sam Reck of Lakeland, Florida had spent the past four months apart from JoAnn Reck, his wife of 30 years, as the state banned nursing home visits.
The couple acquired the names of Romeo and Juliet from the staff, as Sam sat on the balcony of their second-floor apartment and JoAnn, 86, spoke to him from the garden below, according to JoAnn’s son Scott Hooper. .
But he risked his own health to be with his wife once again when JoAnn died on Sunday.
“Here is this 90-year-old man, he risked his life to go see my mother, but that was his choice, that is his freedom to do it. He knew what he was risking,” Hooper told Tampa ABC affiliate WFTS.
He said his mother was diagnosed with dementia about a year ago. She contracted COVID-19 last week and developed fever, cough, and fatigue.
“COVID was hitting her so hard and so fast,” Hooper said. “Anyone who has dealt with that knows what I’m talking about because they don’t always remind you or they don’t know the situation they are in or they think something strange is happening and you try to tell them it isn’t.”
Although visitors, for the most part, are still banned from hospitals, exceptions are made for end-of-life matters. Hopper said there was hardly a dry eye in the room when the two last hugged.
“It was my wife who shot the video and I remember that everyone in the room was crying,” Hooper said. “I remember looking at my wife, she was crying so much that she could barely hold the camera. It was a very emotional moment.”
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