Sheryl had no idea she'd be leaving the hospital without the
Two loving grandparents who’d been married for almost 63 years took their last breaths within hours of one another.
Dolores Winstead, 83, and husband Trent Winstead, 88, died in Nashville's Saint Thomas West Hospital two weeks ago, just shy of their 64th anniversary.
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Trent had been feeling sick and not eating so his daughter, Sheryl Winstead, took him to the emergency room where doctors informed him that he had kidney failure and admitted him to the ICU.
“My mother is sitting next to me. Of course I am concerned for her because I know she loves him a lot. At first I would try to spoon-feed my mom the bad news,” Sheryl told InsideEdition.com. “Her only response was ‘I just don’t know what I will do without him.’”
As a family they stayed by his side in Trent's hospital room and even had hope when doctors said that his kidneys would probably repair themselves, but then the unexpected happened.
Sheryl’s mom, Dolores, suddenly suffered a massive brain hemorrhage on Dec 7. while visiting her husband in the hospital just two days after he’d been admitted. She became unresponsive and had to be admitted herself.
“She started out with a headache… Then she started throwing up. She was in the corner sleeping and I shook her shoulder and I knew by the looks of her that something was really wrong,” said Sheryl.
Sheryl said her dad didn’t quite understand what was happening, but when a nurse rolled him into his wife’s room in a wheel chair, he began crying and tapping her trying to wake her up.
“Just ask God to wake her up,” he said to his children. “He can create a miracle. I don’t know who I’m going to sit on the couch with and watch the news anymore.” Sheryl said he added.
The nurses then made a decision to move the couple into a room so they could lay side-by-side because of Dolores' grave condition – the first time they’d done that in the history of the hospital.
“He started losing his will to live hour by hour once he realized she wasn’t going to survive,” said Sheryl.
Although the doctor had told the family that their father would recover, a cardiologist then informed them that Trent's heart was getting weaker and weaker – a problem he didn’t have when he was first admitted.
On Dec 9. Dolores passed away next to her husband. Sheryl said they didn’t break the news to their father right away. They waited 30 minutes.
“When we told him, he blew her a kiss and said ‘Get her a pink casket and pink dress because that’s what she would want.’”
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Of course they all knew that but he wanted to make sure.
Just the next day, on Dec 10., Trent also took his last breath.
“My parents just had that every day love. To look at the relationship, they knew what it took through the good and bad to stay together. As they grew older together they fell more and more in love,” Sheryl said.
Sheryl believes they wouldn’t have been able to live without out one another.
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“I believe he died from a broken heart,” she said. “They loved each other enough to leave with each other.”
The couple were buried together a week later in the town where they first met - Dolores in a pink casket and Trent in a blue.
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