In an example of the incredible power of true love and commitment after a remarkable marriage of 73 years, 100-year-old Joe Auer recently passed away just 28 hours after his wife Helen died at age 94.
For Joe – who essentially passed away of a broken heart - the family said those last 28 hours were the longest of his life.
People magazine reports on the sweetly romantic details that occurred during those last hours of the couple’s lives. “It was Joe who found Helen first. He walked up to his departed wife, gave her a quick kiss and told her, ‘Helen, call me home.’”
The pair married in 1941 and their “relationship outlasted the Depression and World War II, in which Joe spent over three years fighting,” People reported. “During Joe’s deployment, Helen welcomed the pair’s second child, and she sent her husband a photo of herself with their two kids. Joe carried that photo through the war, and he continued to keep the worn picture in his wallet until the day he died.”
The conversation takes up the issue of whether evidence exists that a person can actually die of a broken heart.
According to Dr. Peter Shapiro, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University who studies emotional issues in heart disease, “traumatic events can trigger your sympathetic nervous system, which is also called your ‘fight or flight’ mechanism.”
He explains that at this time, the body can unleash a flood of chemicals, including adrenaline, which can suddenly “stun your heart muscle, leaving it unable to pump properly.”
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