A heartwarming picture of an elderly Chinese couple, married for nearly seventy years, holding hands in the intensive care unit has gone viral, moving millions of people around the world.
New China reports that the picture was captured and posted by Wang Yanfang, who is the head nurse in the intensive care unit at Yinzhou hospital located in Zhejiang Province, eastern China.
Feng Ming, who is 92 years old, was taken to the intensive care unit because he had heart failure.
Unfortunately, his health got worse, and several of his organs started to fail, and then he developed a lung infection.
Feng ended up not being able to talk, and was being kept alive by a life support machine.
Realizing that his life was coming to an end, his family decided to stop his treatment and take him home. However, he had one last wish before leaving the hospital – he wanted to see his wife, with whom he had shared 66 wonderful years of marriage.
Feng’s wife, Zhang Ping, who is 95 years old, was also in the same hospital. She was on a different floor getting treatment for a broken thigh bone.
Wang, the head nurse, shared with New China, “Visiting hours for the ICU are from 3:00 pm to 3:30 pm, but Feng is in such critical condition that we can’t wait until then.” He made a special exception so that the elderly couple could see each other, possibly for the last time.
Because Wang asked, Feng’s wife was moved on a stretcher from the 14th floor down to the ICU on the third floor, where Feng got to see her one last time.
Wang shared a touching story, explaining that Feng’s wife held her husband’s hand and talked to him in their hometown language, saying, “You don’t have to worry about me. I promise I can take care of myself.”
Feng started to cry when he heard what she said, and a few hours later, he peacefully passed away at home. “We allowed the elderly couple to meet so they could share this special moment, and I’m really glad we made that decision,” Wang mentioned.
This story is both really sad and super touching at the same time. It’s nice to see that Feng and Zhang were there for each other no matter what happened, and they stayed deeply in love right up to the end. That’s what true love is all about.