EAST HAMPTON, NY — A Long Island couple married for 43 years who lived together at Peconic Landing in Greenport died four days apart from the new coronavirus — the latest victims of the pandemic that has swept through the retirement community and killed eight elderly residents.

Edward and Joan Porco, who shared a lifetime love, died alone last week at different East End hospitals.

The loss has been staggering for their family, including their daughter, Julia Charchere, a certified nurse midwife and nurse practitioner from Sag Harbor who moved her practice to Cutchogue in recent years to care for her mother, who had Alzheimer's.

"There's such a huge hole," Charchere said. "Not to be able to be there with them while they were dying was inconceivable."

Her mother, who turned 90 in February, and her stepfather, who would have turned 90 in September, were diagnosed at different times. He died at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital last week and she died just after midnight Saturday at Eastern Long Island Hospital in Greenport.

Learning that both her mother and stepfather had been diagnosed with coronavirus, Charchere felt terrified and helpless.

After spending most of every day with her mother for the past nine months, suddenly they were separated.

"Not to be able to be with her, to talk her through it and hold her hand, was very cruel," she said.

With Ed, it was even more frightening because it was very sudden.

"He grew sick very quickly and I couldn't get him tested at Peconic Landing," Charchere said. "So I put him in my car and got him tested myself. Over the next few days, we were in constant communication and he was clearly getting sicker. There was, again, that feeling of helplessness and frustration, of not being able to be with him."

The idea that both could be gone in a week's time seemed unfathomable. In the case of her stepfather, initially she thought he would be fine with some fluids at the hospital.

"But then they said they needed to put him on a ventilator and, as a health professional, I know exactly what that means," Charchere said. "That in all likelihood, he wouldn't be weaned from that."

Before he was intubated, a nurse handed Ed the phone to talk to Charchere, her husband Gerald, and children Elia and Adin.

A family was left devastated by the loss of a couple married more than 40 years. / Courtesy Julia Charchere.





"We got to talk to him before he was ventilated, tell him how much we loved him, how much he meant to us — and not to be frightened," she said.

At first, she said, her stepfather seemed to rally. Later, when the situation worsened, her family was given the chance to come to the hospital to see him and say goodbye.

"We really debated it," Charchere said. "But he was sedated, and we would have been putting ourselves and others at risk. We had to make the brutal decision not to go."

When her mother was hospitalized at Eastern Long Island Hospital, Charchere said, she was able to visit three times.

"The first two times, she knew that it was me, and tried to speak to me," she said. "The last time she seemed a little less responsive and again, I was there with her — but I couldn't hug her, or kiss her. I couldn't hold her hand."

Her brother Matthew helped Charchere set up her mother's iPod, with the classical music she loved, in the hospital along with a family photograph. The music was playing during her mother's last days, she said.

Coronavirus made the reality of the last moments unthinkable.

"To not be able to explain to her why we weren’t with her was so hard, because I do think she was comprehending," Charchere said. "I didn't want her to feel abandoned. It was excruciating."

Edward and Joan Porco at their Peconic Landing home during a 2016 interview with Patch on the secrets of enduring love. (Lisa Finn/Patch)





Her mother and stepfather, Charchere said, had a lifetime love, one that they described to Patch in a story about the secrets to a long union in 2016.

The couple lived in Montauk for 46 years before moving to Peconic Landing in Greenport seven years ago. The walls of their Peconic Landing home were covered with photographs and paintings, the doorway adorned with masks, all representing the many destinations they visited.

Also framed in their home was a poem Joan wrote for Edward on their fifth anniversary, titled "Celebration."

"There is no time as precious as this," the poem begins. "There is no person as treasured as you."

"I think we're a special kind of couple," Joan told Patch in 2016.

The union was a second marriage for both Joan and Edward; they'd known one another since 1959, when they met at a New Year's Eve party in Port Washington, where they both lived at the time. Their first conversation was an argument about interracial housing, they told Patch. They were both married to others but later, after both were divorced, the pair found true love in one another and married in 1977, even though at first, she was a "rabid Democrat and I was a Republican committeeman," who later became a Democrat himself, Ed said.

"I didn't particularly look for it, but it was waiting for me," Joan said.

The couple shared "wonderful experiences," Joan said, traveling the world, hiking — Edward was a longtime leader at the East Hampton Trails Preservation Society. Hiking trips he organized across the world brought them to Italy, Croatia, England, Patagonia, New Zealand, and the Grand Canyon; together, they set off for Turkey, Kenya, the Galapagos and Egypt.

Living in Montauk, Joan said, was the "most wonderful part of our lives." She was well-known on the South Fork as a writer, columnist and psychotherapist. Their shared passion for classical music was a deep tie — Joan's son sang at Carnegie Hall.

The couple also gave back, helping to make sandwiches for the homeless at John's Place in Greenport. At Peconic Landing, Edward was a teacher in the Lifetime Learning program and Joan wrote for the newsletter; both were docents for the sculpture garden.

Reflecting on their favorite memories with Patch in 2016, Joan said Machu Picchu in the Galapagos was a "sublime experience." But, she added, "It's the sharing of it that's the joy. We've just been so happy. We've had difficulties and differences, like humans have, but we're very fortunate."

They agreed that they shared a love that defined their shared lifetime. "He's the most important part of my life," Joan said.

"She completes me," Edward said.

Her parents, Charchere said, lived "extraordinary lives," in terms of how many other lives they touched, in terms of the joy that they derived from all aspects of their lives. "They really were people who celebrated their lives fully. They embraced it all," she said.

Even their home reflected their outlook, aptly named "Gaudeamus," which means joy.

"I loved them both dearly," Charchere said. "Ed was my stepfather but in so many ways, I considered him my own father. My love for my mother is so deep, I wouldn't even know how to put it into words."

Julia Charchere and her mother. / Courtesy Julia Charchere.





She and her mother, she said, were very similar, in their sensibilities and humor. "She was a great inspiration to me. To be able to be with her so intensely during the last nine months when I moved my practice to Cutchogue was such a gift. It was such a blessing."

Right up until the end, her parents rejoiced in their family and in the gift of their lifetime love. Ed, she said, gave her mother a 90th birthday party on Feb. 22 with all their family and friends at Peconic Landing. "I'm so grateful that he did that," she said.

Of her parents, Charchere said, "They were soul partners. They journeyed so far and wide— I guess they did this last one together, as well."

This article originally appeared on the East Hampton Patch