66-year love story comes to end within 56 hours
Manuel and Maria Ferreira of Kitchener Manuel born: April 20, 1928, in Portugal Died: Aug. 13, 2017 of cancer Maria born: Feb. 11, 1929, in Portugal Died: Aug. 10, 2017 of age related illness
Orlanda Couto gently woke her sleeping father, Manuel Ferreira, and told him that, Maria, his wife of 66 years had passed. Manuel didn’t immediately react and then Couto noticed a single tear slipping down his weary face.
Fifty six hours later, Manuel also passed.
“He knew she didn’t like to be alone,” said Couto, one of the couple’s two children.
Manuel and Maria lived in their Kitchener home up until July, where he cared for her as she slowly slipped away from him in a cloud of confusion. He wasn’t that well himself, suffering from undiagnosed cancer. But he was stubborn and didn’t want anyone fussing over him.
Couto said when anyone visited and tried to help with cooking or housework, he refused, saying they all worked so hard in their day jobs, he didn’t want them having to work at the couple’s house, too.
Manuel just wanted to enjoy their company, uninterrupted by housework.
Grandson Steve Benarus admired his grandfather’s tenacity and devotion to Maria.
“He was taking care of her, that’s a selfless act,” said Benarus. “She had dementia, he had cancer.”
The couple was separated for a short time when they ended up in two different hospitals. Couto said this was the first time in their married lives they had ever been apart, and it was thanks to the quick work of hospital administrators that they were moved to Freeport and put into a room together. It was the Freeport staff that pushed the beds together so Manuel and Maria were never more than a couple of feet apart until they died.
Couto said her parents were so devoted to each other, working as a team and they never fought. In fact peace was so second nature to the household that once she overheard a slightly raised voice and immediately fell into despair thinking this was the end of the marriage.
Overly dramatic childhood reactions aside, Couto said the marriage was always strong, and whenever her father passed by her mother, he would offer a gentle stroke on her shoulder. It was a simple gesture, one that spoke volumes about Manuel’s devotion to Maria.
Manuel and Maria were born and raised on the tiny Portuguese island of São Jorge, which today still has less than 10,000 inhabitants. Such a small island meant everyone knew everyone, said Couto, so it would be easy for them to have met.
Both had lost their fathers at a young age and for Manuel, who was only nine at the time and one of five children, that meant going to work in the fields or orchards to help support the family. Manuel’s grandfather had been the island’s first doctor, but that part of the family shunned his father after he married a woman from a poor family.
Maria’s kin were different. When her mother became a widow with seven children, the extended family offered support.
Manuel served in the army before the couple married in 1951 and they immigrated to Canada in 1969 with teenagers, Orlanda and Elisa. They first landed in St. Catharines to work in the orchards then moved to Winnipeg. But Manuel thought the city too cold. Next stop was Kitchener, where he got a job in construction and Maria worked for a chickenprocessing plant.
Perhaps because he’d lost his dad so young and had been largely ignored by his father’s family Manuel put such focus on family. He’d have lengthy gibberish conversations with babies in the family, never tiring of the baby babble.
“He never raised his voice to us,” said Couto. “In fact he spoke so quietly you’d have to lean in to hear what he was saying.”
When Maria’s company was sold, she didn’t return to work. Manuel retired at age 65 from Aecon, where he had worked since arriving.
Benarus said everyone asked Manuel what he planned to do after retirement and his answer was always the same.
“He said ‘nothing, I was working in the fields at age 10.’” The idea of retirement was appealing and Manuel soon shifted his labours to the garden, where he grew enormous vegetables, including tomatoes and garlic. Maria was in charge of flowers and together they created quite the oasis on their Kitchener property.
“She loved her flowers,” said Couto. “Especially her roses and she grew ferns inside that were huge.”
Apparently, the couple still planted according to the old European way of using phases of the moon.
That connection to nature also extended to grapes. Making wine from grapes that is. Manuel was tremendously proud of his homemade wine, though he was not a big imbiber, just a small glass a day was enough for him. The vegetables, the wine, it was all about sharing what he’d made or grown with his own hands.
Benarus said his grandparents were very generous. Whenever anyone needed support, they were there.
Couto said “they just knew” when a family member could use a bit of help, financial or otherwise.
Maria and Manuel were kind people who helped the Portuguese community when they could, and though Maria never learned to speak English and Manuel’s grasp of English was spotty, they built a successful life together.
Manuel, the man with a perpetual smile on his face and quick with a joke, never lost his patience, not even when Maria would fret and call to him all the time, worried if he was OK or not. Manuel would respond that he’s fine and continue with what he was doing. If he happened to be in the basement, he would trudge up the stairs, check in with Maria, then return downstairs, all without complaint.
Couto said “he never said ‘no’ to her.”
In those final days they shared in adjacent beds, another tragedy struck the family. Their daughter Elisa Benarus was also hospitalized for serious complications from cancer treatment. She was unable to be with her parents in their final days, a deeply emotional strain for everyone.
“It’s these times when family comes together,” said Benarus. “We’re all very close, a very close family bond.”
Their final days would be spent in that shared hospital room, within reach of each other.
And when they died just three days apart, Walser Funeral Home moved quickly to ensure Maria and Manuel would have a joint funeral. It was a fitting ending to six decades of devotion.
“They loved each other,” said Couto.