Their marriage vows were until death do us part.

But a number of elderly couples in the province have found they can’t remain together when one or both of them need to move into long-term care — and their poignant stories of separation prompted Waterloo New Democrat MPP Catherine Fife to introduce a private member’s bill to change that.

“This essentially came from a sense of frustration that here we are, trying to ensure that people who are married for 60 years get to spend their last days together,” Fife said in a recent interview.

One case in particular has stuck with her: an 82-year-old who had been taking a taxi every day to see his wife. “He told me he took an oath ‘till death do us part and now I am failing her.’ He started crying, his daughter started crying — I started crying.”

But despite efforts by Fife and her staff, they could not reunite the pair.

Fife said she’s also making the case for more funding for long-term care beds, given it costs $842 a day for a hospital bed and $126 for a long-term care bed, and she’d also like to see more “care campuses” — where facilities offer different levels of care to seniors.

The bill passed second reading just before the house rose in mid-December and will now go to committee, and Fife said she was pleased to see members of the governing Conservatives support it.

Merrilee Fullerton, Ontario’s minister of long-term care, said, “Members of our government were proud to speak in favour of Bill 153 and support the bill through second reading. We understand how important this issue is for many families across Ontario and we remain committed to examining how we can keep loved ones together in long-term care.”

She noted the government is spending $1.75 billion to create 15,000 new long-term care beds and “redevelop 15,000 existing, older beds in five years to help increase access to long-term care, reduce wait-lists and alleviate hospital capacity pressures.”

To date, she added, 7,889 new beds have been allocated and the long-term care funding is “our government’s largest new health sector spending commitment” in the 2019 budget.

However, Fife said she’s been flooded by calls from concerned family members who are upset about their parents’ forced separation.

Kathy Ziegler’s parents Don and Pat Oberholzer moved into a retirement home together around 2015, but her father was later diagnosed with colon cancer and, when he was discharged from hospital, he was using a walker to get around and needed more care.

“He could not return to the home where they were because they didn’t have a place for the two of them to be together,” Ziegler said. So they moved the couple to another home, but then a few months ago “he started falling more and more, his legs are just giving way,” and needed a nursing home.

He got a bed more than a month ago and “he’s doing well as far as participating … but my dad is a very quiet man, not outgoing at all, but the biggest factor is he misses my mom terribly,” she said. “He misses her — he cries every time I go to see her.”

She said it’s tough on the family too, as they have to shuttle between two places to see their parents.

“I didn’t know how the whole system works,” she said. “You don’t realize how bad it is until you live it and you actually see your parents apart” after 66 years of marriage, she added.

Fife said funding for long-term care has not kept pace with an aging population under the current Conservative or previous Liberal governments, and now 35,000 people are on a wait-list.

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“The only way right now to get into long-term care is if you are in crisis,” she added. “So, really, the goal of the bill is to shine a light on the fact that the entire system is in crisis and connected to a failure of leadership by successive governments.”

Fife’s bill, named the Till Death Do Us Part Act, amends the Long-Term Care Homes Act and its Residents’ Bill of Rights to allow a patient “the right, upon admission, to have accommodations made available for their partner in the home.”

Jim McLeod, who lives in Cambridge in seniors’ apartments, drives every day to see Joan, his wife of 61 years, who is in a long-term care facility in Waterloo. She’s been waiting for more than two years to be reunited with him.

The 80-year-old said “it’s a stressful time for both of us … fortunately, I can still drive, I have a car, but if that day came where I couldn’t?”

There is a long-term care facility attached to his building, so she could transfer, “but it doesn’t work that way,” he said.

“I’m not the only one in this situation,” he added. “It’s sad, it’s really sad. If Joan was here, we could have quite a number of meals together” and take part in activities.