'Together until the end': Man, woman married 51 years die 32 hours apart

Theresa McIsaac paced around the house whenever her husband, Leroy, would leave for the casino or to work on old cars at his shop a few kilometres down the road.

After 51 years of marriage, they were inseparable. 

"She just couldn't be without him," said 46-year-old Ken McIsaac, the couple's son.

"Whatever my dad was doing, my mom wanted to be with him. And he made sure that happened."

Theresa McIsaac, 73, died on Jan. 29 at the Georgetown Hospital in Ontario.

Her husband, Leroy McIsaac, 72, died 32 hours later at home.

"I said to him, 'Mom would be pacing at the gates waiting for him ... when you get there, you just tell her you were at the casino,'" Ken said.   

How they met

Theresa was born in Covedell, N.B., a small community about 50 kilometres northeast of Miramichi.

As a teenager, she left school after her father died and went to work at various jobs around the family farm.

She wanted to get out of New Brunswick in her early 20s. She moved to Acton, a town in Ontario almost 25 kilometres northeast of Guelph, where Leroy grew up. 

There was always something happy about everything with them.- Appoline Thibodeau

A few months later, in 1968, the couple met at a house party.

Three months after that, they married at a small Roman Catholic church packed with hundreds of people.

"He looked like Elvis Presley when he was young," said Theresa's 76-year-old sister, Appoline Thibodeau, who was maid of honour that day. "He was a good looking man … she was crazy over him."

From there, the couple built a life together in Acton. 

Leroy owned his own construction business while Theresa took care of their two kids.

Over the years, the couple loved to joke back and forth. She called him Roy and he called her "his old girl" or Mama T.

A passion for music

But they were drawn to one another through their love of music. 

Theresa sang and played guitar. If she forgot the lyrics, Leroy would be there to fill in the gaps.

"He knew every song there was," Thibodeau said.

Family and friends were always coming in and out of their house for drinks, food or just to visit. 

The couple hosted barbecues and pig roasts and Theresa would always bring out her guitar to the middle of the kitchen table, on the deck or around a campfire and start singing.

"My parents' house was a central hub of people popping in," Ken said, who also plays the guitar.

"Their doors were always open."

He remembers summer trips to New Brunswick where he would ride his uncles' lobster boats and dig for oysters along the sandbar in the northern part of the province.  

"We travelled the Trans-Canada a lot when we were kids," he said.

Ken was hoping to bring his parents back to New Brunswick this summer for Old Home Week in Tabusintac so they could reconnect with family. 

"There was always something happy about everything with them," Thibodeau said at her home in Covedell.

A world of sickness

That happy life turned to tragedy in 2017 when Ken's sister Susan Jansen was diagnosed with small-cell lung cancer, a rare and aggressive form of the disease that spreads rapidly.

In 2018, Ken's father was diagnosed with non-small cell lung cancer. The two underwent treatment at the same time.

Ken's sister died a year later at the age of 49.

"That took a toll on them," Ken said. "It's not right to lose your own child." 

It was then Ken and his wife, Sharon, decided to move their two children from St. Thomas, Ont., a city in the southwestern part of the province, to Acton.

They rebuilt a bigger version of his parents' home, where the six of them could live. Ken could take care of his parents.

But things started getting worse.   

Dying of a broken heart

That fall, Theresa was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. She was starting to give up on her own health, too.

If Leroy struggled to drink water, she wouldn't drink water.

If Leroy didn't eat, Theresa wouldn't eat.

"She was watching her husband failing," Ken said. 

"Her own ambition to get up and do anything had just halted."

By early December, Theresa was diagnosed with pneumonia and doctors found a blockage in her lung. They presumed it was lung cancer but booked her for an official diagnosis on Feb. 12.

From there, Theresa's health deteriorated. She often needed help using the washroom and spent more time sleeping.

She was rushed to the hospital at the end of January, where doctors discovered the cancer had spread throughout her body.

She died two days later.

"To us it feels like, 'There's no way you're [Leroy] going to go without me.'"

When Ken returned home from the hospital, people were coming to the house to send their condolences.  

Once he could grab some time alone with his father, Ken delivered the news about his mother's death.

And that was it.

For the next 32 hours, Leroy stopped talking. He never left his bed. His pulse became weaker and his breathing grew shallow.

"For him it was like, 'It's OK for me to go now,'" Ken said. "Although it's sad for us, it's absolutely beautiful."

Life without mom and dad

Family and friends in Ontario and New Brunswick are still trying to wrap their heads around the deaths.

"I couldn't believe it because we knew Theresa was sick, but not that sick," said Thibodeau. "All of a sudden, bang.

"And the two of them going away together, that's not something you see too often." 

At their shared funeral last weekend, the family played The French Song by Lucille Starr. It was a song Theresa loved to play on the guitar. 

During their life together, family members would often catch Theresa gazing into her husband's eyes when she sang it.

"They were together until the end," Thibodeau said.