Texas Couple Die of COVID-19 Together While Holding Hands

It's a story seemingly ripped from the pages of the ending of The Notebook. A couple from Texas died from COVID-19 at almost the same time while holding hands.

The story comes out of Grand Prairie in North Texas. Paul Blackwell was a gym teacher and football coach at Fannin Middle School. Rose Blackwell, his wife, was a teacher at the Travis World Language Academy. According to their son, Christopher Blackwell, the couple had been in the hospital and in intensive care for several days. Their conditions continued to worsen and the couple was placed on ventilators. Eventually the decision was made to remove the couple from life support. Christopher said:

Two of my other brothers are actually in the room there at the hospital and they wheeled my stepmother in there in the room with my father and at the same time, removed them both from the ventilator. They had them holding hands and they were both gone in a couple of minutes. I’ve never seen anything like that before and it’s hard to even put into words seeing that.

The couple worked up until the point they got sick, and it's not clear how the contracted COVID-19. It was known for about a week that the couple probably wasn't going to survive as doctors informed the family of the unfortunate outcome. The couple were both well respected teachers at their schools and counseling has been offered to the students to help them through the loss.