Last victim...my perfect wife who died 7 months on
A DISTRAUGHT husband gave harrowing details of how he held his wife’s hand as she died in hospital this year – more than seven months after the couple were trapped in their blazing flat.
Fighting back tears, Nicholas Burton, 50, said the “perfect” mother-of-one Pily Burton, 74, initially survived.
But after suffering severe smoke inhalation she had a brain haemorrhage and a stroke before dying in January – the last of the fire’s 72 victims.
“After two weeks on life support they told me there was nothing they could do,” Mr Burton said.
“I just stayed there for the whole week, listening and listening and holding her hand. January 29, Pily took her last breath just as her son walked into the room.”
Mr Burton, who needed emergency surgery after the fire, said the couple were separated after the inferno reached their 19th-floor flat but he found Pily days later at the Royal Free Hospital, Hampstead.
In addition to her ordeal, his Spanish-born wife was suffering with dementia.
Mr Burton said: “She was very distressed.
“How do you explain to a person in her condition?
“Our house had gone. Our dog had gone. Good friends and neighbours may have passed and many friends were missing. Her parents’ ashes which we had kept in the flat had gone. “Everything was gone. “It was too much so I just had to try to explain with little bits of information to guide her through the trauma.”
He said his “flamboyant” wife, who spoke five languages and loved music, dancing, and cooking, was a “unique, beautiful, exceptional person until this tragedy had taken it away”.
Mr Burton met Pily at a Spanish disco and they spent nearly two decades together before marrying in 2000.
He told the inquiry: “She wasn’t a princess or anything, she was just a people person.
“I am truly blessed that I had 34 years with such a person.”