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Couple holding hands dies 1 minute apart of COVID-19

By Theresa Seiger, Cox Media Group National Content Desk
By Theresa Seiger, Cox Media Group National Content Desk

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — A Michigan couple diagnosed with COVID-19 died within one minute of each other Sunday, according to WXMI.

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Sarah Dunham told the news station that her parents, Cal and Linda Dunham, did everything together.

“The love that they found together after a previous marriage is fantastic,” she told WXMI. “They were the people that you just looked at and you were like, ‘I want to be old like that. I want that love when I’m that age.’”

The couple became ill during a family camping trip earlier this month, according to WXMI. At first, Cal Dunham thought he was dealing with sinus troubles. Later, Linda Dunham told their daughter that she had caught her husband’s cold.

“The third day they woke me up and said, ‘We’ve got to go because we don’t feel well,’” Sarah Duham told WXMI. “So, I packed them up and they left.”

Within days Cal and Linda Dunham, who were fully vaccinated against COVID-19 but had underlying conditions that exacerbated their conditions, were hospitalized on ventilators, according to WXMI. Doctors told family members Sunday that there was nothing more they could do and that the couple would probably need to come off life-support the next day, the news station reported. However, they died Sunday after being wheeled into the same room.

Cal Dunham died at 11:07 a.m., according to a GoFundMe campaign launched to help the family pay funeral expenses. Linda Dunham died one minute later, at 11:08 a.m. At the time, they were holding hands, WXMI reported.

“(Linda) always joked and said, ‘Well, you’re going to go before I am. I’ll be right there behind you, I promise,’” Sarah Dunham told WXMI. “And she really was, like she really was right there behind him.”

She told the news station that she took comfort in knowing that her parents were together in death, just as they were in life. However, she also expressed anger over people not taking the virus seriously.

“So many people are like, ‘If I catch COVID, I catch COVID that’s what it is.’ No, it’s not,” she told WXMI. “It could be any person. It could be anybody.”

She added that her parents “did everything right. They did everything to protocol the way it should be done.”

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