Gottfried and Hildegard Adler are just where they wanted to be – side by side, holding hands, relaxed and comfortable in a sunlit room decorated with Hummel figurines and family photographs.
They have every reason to smile, and they did non-stop during a visit Monday afternoon at Finlandia Hoivakoti residence.
Everyone who encounters them at the nursing home operated by the Sudbury Finnish Rest Home Society breaks into grins. The couple’s six-month separation was widely publicized and an entire community was rooting for them to be reunited.
Hildegard was hospitalized at Ramsey Lake Health Centre in early August last year after breaking her pelvis. Gottfried’s health declined in the weeks after his bride of 67 years left the home. He was declared in crisis in the community and placed at Finlandia in mid-September.
When his wife was recovered enough to join him, a health-care system plagued with lengthy wait lists and a shortage of long-term beds kept them apart.
The couple’s daughter, Helga Leblanc, and their daughter-in-law, Linda Adler, spoke out in January about their family situation and the toll it was taking on the elderly Aldlers. Hildegard, 89, suffers from dementia and it was heart-breaking to see her cry herself to sleep at night because she missed Gottfried, 91, said Leblanc and Adler.
A new provincial regulation, enacted just weeks ago, puts a priority on reuniting family members who have been separated, setting aside beds in long-term care homes for that purpose. That was what it took to get Hildegard a bed at Finlandia.
After Hildegard moved to the residence, the couple still had to live apart 10 days because Gottfried was living in an area that was locked down due to an influenza outbreak. Leblanc said Monday that it was difficult to make her mother understand why she could not be with her husband after she arrived at the nursing home. Hildegard wanted to at least see her husband through the glass of a door to the area he was living in, but Leblanc and Gottfried thought it would be too difficult for the elderly woman.
Leblanc, though, breathed a huge sigh of relief becausee her parents were at least living under the same roof and she knew they would be together in days. And they were, just in time to celebrate Hildegard’s 89th birthday.
Leblanc visits her parents most days, but if she can’t get there for some reason, she can rest assured they are happy and together. The family feared one of the Adlers would take sick and not live to see that happen.
At the time the Adlers separation was being publicized, the North East Local Health Integration Network estimated there were 10 families in its catchment area waiting to be reunited.
The day before Leblanc was told there was a bed for her mother at Finlandia, there were three people ahead of Hildegard on the waiting list.
As happy as she is to have her parents reunited, Leblanc wonders what became of those families and individuals.
Her advice to people who may be suffering the heartbreak her family did is simply this: “We can only fight politics with politics.”
The family contacted Nickel Belt MPP France Gelinas, the New Democrats’ Health and Long-term Care critic, who spoke out about the Adlers during Question Period in the Ontario Legislature. Then Health Minister Eric Hoskins, in one of his last acts before resigning from provincial politics, was to have the regulation implemented that helps reunite families.
Leblanc is also grateful to the community for its support of her family. She had been warned that some might criticize her family for speaking out, but it received nothing but kindness, she said.
Her parents moved into the same room, with single hospital-type beds placed together to form a double bed, just two days before her mother’s birthday. Gottfried gifted his wife with roses.
Carol Mulligan is an award-winning reporter and one of Greater Sudbury’s most experienced journalists.
