For the past eight months they have been forced to live separately, because nearby rest homes can not accommodate the couple, their granddaughter Ashley Bartyik said.
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Ashley Bartyik, the couple’s granddaughter, told ABC News today she’s anxious that their “heartbreak and the stress could literally kill them”.
Bartyik posted a photograph of her grandparents, who she calls “Omi” and “Opi”, wiping away tears during a meeting in the months-long wait for a care home.
British Columbia’s advocate for seniors has called on the provincial government to allow greater flexibility for seniors to choose how they want to live their final years.
Wolf is on a waitlist to move into The Residence at Morgan Heights, the same nursing home as Anita.
Settling there, the couple was never separated from each other, as they went on to have three children – a son and two girls.
They married in 1954, and while he worked in construction and as a Merchant Marine she worked focused on retail.
Every other day, family members drive Anita half an hour up the road to see Wolf.
She recently posted a photo to Facebook of the despondent couple, crying in a visiting room, that has now been shared almost 3,000 times.
“My grandma needs to be able to spend these last few days with him, not anxious about when the next time she’ll see him is”. “Now with the news of cancer, our fight to have them in the same facility is even more urgent”.
To make the situation worse, he’s in the early stages of dementia and has recently been diagnosed with lymphoma.
“His dementia is growing ever stronger each day, but his memory of my grandmother has not faded an inch.yet”.
“We certainly understand how heartbreaking this is for the family”.
“After 62 years together in marriage they have been separated for 8 months 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”.
She said that not all facilities have both the higher level of care needed by her Wolfram Gottschalk and the assisted living support needed by his wife, but that Anita Gottschalk’s center is one and she expects an opening in it within a few weeks. On Aug. 25, Fraser Health told the family they are now making the couple’s reunion a priority, reports CBC.
But Bartyik says her family has not received any correspondence from the local health authority, .
“The wife went into assisted living in July and we’ve been working hard with the family to get their loved ones reunited since”.
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“We’re just asking for anything that can be done so that my grandfather can be accommodated as soon as possible”, Bartyik told CTV News.
