Story By: Lisa-Maria Goertz, Sub-Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Newsflash

An elderly couple have died just hours apart from each other after 64 years of loving marriage.

Wan Zainun Wan Chik, 84, and husband Wan Yahya Wan Husein, 87, lived in the town of Kuala Berang, in the central Malaysian constitutive state of Terengganu.
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After 64 years of marriage, Chik died in hospital at 6.48 am, and just 15 hours later at 9.40 pm, her husband, Husein, breathed his last breath at their home.

Their eldest daughter, Wan Rahimah, 63, said that the health of both her parents had begun to decline since last month.

Rahimah said her father was diagnosed with a lung condition on October 15th, five days before her mother was admitted to the hospital with end-stage intestinal cancer.

Rahimah said: “My father was very sad and seemed to have lost half his life after my mother was admitted to the hospital. Their relationship was very close.”

She added that she had brought her father to see her mother in hospital, where he held her hand tightly, pondered his wife’s face deeply while crying.

When Chik was confirmed dead, Rahimah said her dad begun to cry again but bucked himself up to attend her funeral ceremony, before passing away later that evening.

Rahimah said: “We siblings did not expect to lose our father so soon after our mother died.

“My father’s body was safely buried in the same cemetery at 9 this morning. Although we are still shocked to lose both our parents on the same day, we are satisfied with God’s decision.”

Rahimah described her parents as being a romantic couple who never once had a big fight.

She said: “They always made decisions together during the 64 years of marriage.”

According to national newspaper MYKMU, the couple raised their five siblings to work in the family business as retail and spice shopkeepers since the 1970s before they retired and their children took over in 2008.

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