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In 51 years of marriage, Patricia and Garry “Bud” Robertson never spent a day apart.
Together, they worked hard to raise four kids in a modest row house on Somerset Street West, grieved a son’s tragic death and battled cancer, but they never stopped sharing daily coffee dates.
And when death came, it took them on the same day.
Patricia Robertson died of leukemia Tuesday morning at the Queensway Carleton Hospital, where Garry Robertson was in the emergency room suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and bowel cancer. He died 13 hours later.
She was 70; he was 76.
“They were inseparable,” said their son, Gary.
Added their daughter, Colleen, “It’s a love story.
“They did a journey together and they’re still on that journey now,” she said.
“They’re together again,” her brother, Larry, said.
The couple met in tiny Whitney on the edge of Algonquin Park. Sixteen-year old Patricia was new in town when she met Garry, who came from a local family with 13 kids.
A favourite story is when Patricia had to leave for her job in food services at 4 a.m., Garry rose with her so they could read the paper and have coffee together, hours before he started his own shift driving a truck.
The couple would go to church at St. Luke’s Anglican Church down the street or have breakfast at the former Cozy’s diner while doing the wash at the laundromat next door.
Their final years were spent in Bayshore-area apartment where Garry delighted in feeding squirrels on the balcony. They were still visiting Tim Hortons around the city — always seeming to know someone at every one. A year ago, they renewed their wedding vows.
Patricia and Garry Robertson.
“That was their life,” Garry’s sister, Narda Bowers, said. “They just enjoyed each other. They got everything from each other. As their diseases progressed, we knew that one wouldn’t last without the other.”
Bowers remembered taking Garry to see his wife in the hospital, running out for the inevitable coffee to return to find them sharing a chair and holding hands. They’d blow kisses when they parted.
Days before they died, Patricia was told that her organs were failing and death was near.
“Her dying wish was to have coffee one last time at the coffee shop,” Bowers, said. “It was a four-hour coffee.”
Last Thursday, the couple, she as outspoken as he was shy, each had their usual — small, two creams — then shared a medium at the hospital’s coffee shop.
They will have a joint visitation at Pinecrest Cemetery on Tuesday. The funeral is Wednesday at St. Luke’s.
The Rev. Gregor Sneddon was with them after their son, Barry, died in 2012. He’d been shocked and badly burned while replacing electrical poles on Moodie Drive.
The Robertsons knew suffering but “lived side by side, through thick and thin,” he said, remembering them as “tremendously kind and loving and accepting.”
Garry told tales of working in logging camps while living in one-room cabin with a coal stove and no running water. Patricia was determined to buy the visiting priest the maple cookies he’d once said he liked.
Several times over the past few years, each had been close to death but rallied, a simple reminder of the power of love in lives we make so complicated.
“They couldn’t really comprehend living in this world with out each other — that was the biggest thing and I think that’s what kept bring them back, was each other,” Sneddon said. “So when it was finally time for Pat to say farewell, it was both their farewells because they were each other’s reason for living.”
查看原文...
Together, they worked hard to raise four kids in a modest row house on Somerset Street West, grieved a son’s tragic death and battled cancer, but they never stopped sharing daily coffee dates.
And when death came, it took them on the same day.
Patricia Robertson died of leukemia Tuesday morning at the Queensway Carleton Hospital, where Garry Robertson was in the emergency room suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and bowel cancer. He died 13 hours later.
She was 70; he was 76.
“They were inseparable,” said their son, Gary.
Added their daughter, Colleen, “It’s a love story.
“They did a journey together and they’re still on that journey now,” she said.
“They’re together again,” her brother, Larry, said.
The couple met in tiny Whitney on the edge of Algonquin Park. Sixteen-year old Patricia was new in town when she met Garry, who came from a local family with 13 kids.
A favourite story is when Patricia had to leave for her job in food services at 4 a.m., Garry rose with her so they could read the paper and have coffee together, hours before he started his own shift driving a truck.
The couple would go to church at St. Luke’s Anglican Church down the street or have breakfast at the former Cozy’s diner while doing the wash at the laundromat next door.
Their final years were spent in Bayshore-area apartment where Garry delighted in feeding squirrels on the balcony. They were still visiting Tim Hortons around the city — always seeming to know someone at every one. A year ago, they renewed their wedding vows.
Patricia and Garry Robertson.
“That was their life,” Garry’s sister, Narda Bowers, said. “They just enjoyed each other. They got everything from each other. As their diseases progressed, we knew that one wouldn’t last without the other.”
Bowers remembered taking Garry to see his wife in the hospital, running out for the inevitable coffee to return to find them sharing a chair and holding hands. They’d blow kisses when they parted.
Days before they died, Patricia was told that her organs were failing and death was near.
“Her dying wish was to have coffee one last time at the coffee shop,” Bowers, said. “It was a four-hour coffee.”
Last Thursday, the couple, she as outspoken as he was shy, each had their usual — small, two creams — then shared a medium at the hospital’s coffee shop.
They will have a joint visitation at Pinecrest Cemetery on Tuesday. The funeral is Wednesday at St. Luke’s.
The Rev. Gregor Sneddon was with them after their son, Barry, died in 2012. He’d been shocked and badly burned while replacing electrical poles on Moodie Drive.
The Robertsons knew suffering but “lived side by side, through thick and thin,” he said, remembering them as “tremendously kind and loving and accepting.”
Garry told tales of working in logging camps while living in one-room cabin with a coal stove and no running water. Patricia was determined to buy the visiting priest the maple cookies he’d once said he liked.
Several times over the past few years, each had been close to death but rallied, a simple reminder of the power of love in lives we make so complicated.
“They couldn’t really comprehend living in this world with out each other — that was the biggest thing and I think that’s what kept bring them back, was each other,” Sneddon said. “So when it was finally time for Pat to say farewell, it was both their farewells because they were each other’s reason for living.”
查看原文...
