A Massachusetts couple died within hours after 63 years of marriage, family members said.
Richard “Chick” Nylen told his daughter before his death that her mother, Blanche Nylen, who had been battling cancer, wasn’t doing well.
“My dad said, ‘Mom said she’s ready, but she’s not going to go before the holidays. She doesn’t want to ruin the holidays,’” Christina Queeney, the couple’s daughter, told the Worcester Telegram & Gazette of a conversation they had just before Christmas. “And he said, ‘She wants me to go with her.’”
Queeney told her dad that things don’t work like that.
“I said, ‘Dad, this is not “The Notebook,” this is not TV,’” she recalled. “He winked at me and he said, ‘We’re going to go together.’”
Richard Nylen died on Feb. 2. Blanche Nylen died just hours later.
A few days later, the Nylens were cremated and entombed in the same vault at the Massachusetts Veterans Memorial Cemetery.
Queeney remembered that her parents were practically inseparable. “It was always Chick and Blanche, Mom and Dad, Grammy and Pop,” she said. “They were always in love.”
“It was a good thing that they went together,” she added. “The meaning of it was so precious. For them, it was always about love.”
After 63 years of marriage, #Holden husband and wife die within hours https://t.co/bIgHWBB0JX @KimRingTG pic.twitter.com/xwW6dctjrV
— Telegram & Gazette (@telegramdotcom) February 20, 2019
According to the couple’s joint obituary, they were both 85 when they died after being married for 63 years.
Richard Nylen was born in Worcester on Oct. 4, 1933, and lived most of his life in Holden. Blanche Nylen was born in Ware on Oct. 10, 1933, and lived most of her life in Holden.
Richard Nylen worked as a machinist at the Norton Company before working at Olson Manufacturing and, after retirement, at the Margaret A. Rice Elementary School. He was a Navy veteran of the Korean War.
Blanche Nylen was a devoted mother who worked part time as a bookkeeper at the former Century Supermarket and, later, Micro Networks. She was also an artist.
Couple Dies Within Hours of Each Other in Australia
A young couple died within hours of each other in Australia in late 2018.
Jason Francis, 29, was hit by a car near the house he shared with his partner Alice Robinson in Perth, reported The Telegraph. Just hours later, Robinson was found dead.
Sam Diamond, president of Cottesloe Rugby Union Football Club, which Francis was a member of, said that Robinson went outside when she saw flashing emergency lights.
“She was told by first responders that it was Jason they were working on,” he said. She was left heartbroken by her partner’s death but it wasn’t clear what happened to her.
Following on from our tragic news of Jason and Alice, a go fund me page has been set up to raise funds to bring our friends home so that the families can lay them to rest #gofundme #donate https://t.co/0pTHtPvrZ4
— Newport Salop RUFC (@NewportSalopRFC) December 24, 2018
“We don’t know what happened to her after this. I know the police have launched an inquiry into it. She has gone missing after notifying some of our friends of what’s happened [to Francis] and hasn’t been found until the next morning,” he said.
According to The Sun, Robinson committed suicide after learning of her partner’s death.
Diamond told The Telegraph that Francis and Robinson “were just genuine, down-to-earth, fantastic people.”
On a GoFundme fundraising page, Diamond said he was raising money for the families of the partners, noting they were from the United Kingdom. The fundraiser raised more than $44,000.
