Couple married 62 years forced to live in separate nursing homes
Every other day, members of Anita Gottschalk’s family drive her from the nursing home where she lives to another more than 30 minutes away. There, she holds hands with her husband Wolf, who despite a diagnosis of dementia, remembers the 62 years he has spent day by day beside his wife.
But every trip is marked by tears that they will have to separate again that day, their granddaughter Ashley Bartyik said, “due to backlogs and delays by our health care system, whom have the power to have my grandpa moved to the same care facility as my grandmother.”
Their nearly daily meetings gained attention internationally when Bartyik shared a photo of the two crying together on Facebook this week.
After the photo of their goodbye was shared thousands of times, a spokeswoman for Fraser Health, the healthcare group responsible, said the facility was “committed to reuniting the couple and we hope to do so within the next few weeks.”
But Bartyik said in a post Wednesday night that they still haven’t heard anything from the facility responsible.
“In some interviews, Fraser [H]ealth is saying they are working closely with my family to get my grandpa moved,” she wrote. “I want to be clear, we still have not received one single phone call from them in the past 8 months that this has been going on.”
The Gottschalks’ separation began in January, when Wolf was moved to Yale Road Centre in Surrey, British Columbia, which houses seniors waiting to be transferred to other nursing facilities. There, Bartyik said, he hasn’t received proper care: She wrote in her original Facebook post that he has been using a wheelchair because he has received no physical therapy.
But it is his separation from his wife, who he wed in 1954, that weighs on their family the most. They have asked in person, in calls and to various agencies to have him moved to be with her, Bartyik wrote, with no success.
The photo Bartyik posted Tuesday showed the two sitting together, knees pressed close, as each dabbed at their eyes with tissues over their impending goodbye.
"After 62 years together, they're inseparable. They do everything together,” Bartyik told CTV News in Canada. “My grandma can't even kiss him goodnight now. He calls out for her when he sees her.”
This week, Wolf Gottschalk also received a lymphoma diagnosis that his family fears is likely to shorten the time he has left.
"The time is ticking now more than ever before," Bartyik told CNN. The 29-year-old said she cares for her grandparents full-time and just wants to see them reunited before his memories of her begin to fade.
“We want justice for my grandparents who after 62 years together deserve to spend their last moments in the same building,” she wrote in her original Facebook post.
This story was originally published August 26, 2016 at 5:49 AM with the headline "Couple married 62 years forced to live in separate nursing homes."