Elderly Couple From Burnley Die Three Days Apart After 76 Years Together

Couple With Dementia Die Three Days Apart After 76 Years Together
|

An inseparable elderly couple who met as teenagers have died three days apart after 76 years together.

Phyllis and Miles Higgin met in 1933 and were only ever separated by the boundaries of war.

The couple both suffered from dementia and shared a double room together at their care home in Burnley, Lancashire.

Their only child, Angela Hartley, spoke out about the couple in heartbreaking detail.

"I used to think my dad would go first because he was in worse health than my mum, but now I know that he was holding on for mum," she told the Telegraph.

"He didn't want to leave her alone. Then when she had gone, he knew he could go too."

Open Image Modal

Phyllis and Miles Higgin

Continuing to describe her parents' love, Hartley said: "They would holiday together, shop together, walk together. They did absolutely everything together. They didn't spend any time apart.

"They never talked of having a secret to their marriage but would always talk things through and would do everything together.

"At the end of the day they just loved each other very much."

Phyllis, 97, died on December 17 at Abbey Grange Care Home and her husband just three days later, aged 99.

Their romance began in 1933 when they met at a dance when Phyllis was just 15 years old.

The pair married in 1939, after which Miles was sent to war and they were apart during his active service where he worked as a cook for the Royal Artillery, stationed in Germany and Belgium.

Hartley was born in in 1949.