Utah couple together in life and in death
November 20th, 2010 @ 10:00pm
By Brooke Walker
KEARNS -- As the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Stanley and Marjorie Wheeler gather to remember the couple they all loved the topic is one of togetherness.
"Sixty-eight years is a long time to be together," said daughter-in-law Colleen Wheeler. "It's appropriate that they end their lives together, because they lived them together. High school sweethearts, the two married in 1942. Except for the few years Stanley was away at war, they built a full and happy life side by side: raising five children, serving an LDS mission.
Things slowed down the last few years, as their health declined; two years ago, they moved in with their daughter. Health needs required them to be cared for in separate rooms, but that didn't keep them apart.
"One time, Myrah couldn't find my mother and she worried," son Bill Wheeler recalls. "She went walking around the yard looking for her. Well, she had slipped in bed with my dad."
And that's where they found Marjorie the night before her husband of 68 years passed away.
"I still don't know how the hospital bed bars got bent," daughter Myrah Heaton said. "But I had put her to bed and she climbed out to go see him, and we found her there."
Stanley passed away last Friday morning; Marjorie followed, just hours later.
"It was a peaceful passing. I've never seen such a peaceful passing," said daughter Susan Smith.
And while there are tears, family members are also celebrating, knowing the Wheelers died in the very the same way they lived -- together.
Heaton calls it a gift to the entire family.
"I think it was the exclamation point in their lives."
