Elderly couple reunited after being forced to spend two years apart
An elderly Ontario couple is finally living under the same roof after being forced to spend most of the past two years apart.
The Clelands — Robert, 90, and Elizabeth, 84 — were reunited Wednesday after he was finally given the green light to move into her long-term-care home from his, two hours away.
Consequences of old age, failing health and an overburdened long-term-care system had pulled the couple apart.
Until April 9, 2013, they had lived together in an apartment in Orillia, where Robert was caregiver for Elizabeth, his wife of almost 63 years, who has dementia.
A knock at the door that day set off a turn of events that would separate the pair for the next 23 months. He got up from his chair too quickly and his legs gave out from under him. Next thing the retired architectural draftsman remembers is waking up in Soldiers’ Memorial Hospital with a broken hip.
Even though the province’s long-term-care system has a reunification program that is supposed to give priority placement to spouses, the Clelands have spent most of the time since that day in separate homes — Elizabeth at Cedarvale Lodge in Keswick and Robert 150 kilometres away at Hope Street Terrace in Port Hope.
Full story by Theresa Boyle and video available in The Toronto Star