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A couple who were married 59 years died last month holding hands in their shared hospital room. 

Don and Margaret Livengood, ages 84 and 80, charmed the workers at Carolinas Healthcare NorthEast, so someone pulled strings to let the ailing husband and wife share their last days together in the same room. 

Nurses positioned the couple's beds to face each other, so that they were holding hands as Margaret passed just before 8am on August 19.

That afternoon at 5.19pm, her husband followed her in death, telling his children and grandchildren before he died that he was looking forward to joining his wife in heaven.  

'When we get to heaven, we can walk in together, just like we're getting married again. Another honeymoon,' Don said, according to his daughter Pattie Livengood Beaver, who spoke with People.

Beaver and her husband moved in with her parents last year, when both became sick. Her father had pulmonary fibrosis and bilateral pneumonia when he died, while her mother was diagnosed with cancer in May and had several other serious health issues. 

Don could barely breathe at the end of his life, but his wife assured him that the air would be better in heaven. 

The couple spent the better part of last year in and out of the hospital, and their daughter says that whenever one was left behind at home they were sad. 

When Don was hospitalized, his wife would sit with him each day from 4am to 8pm or 9pm.

Beaver says she drove her parents to the hospital to be admitted together on August 8, not knowing it would be the last time. 

Family members believe the couple held out so that their grandson Brandon, his wife Jerrica and their two children could make it for one last visit. The family is stationed in Italy and nearly missed a connection from Detroit to Charlotte, but were allowed to go through the pilot's security line and made the flight. They arrived at the hospital just 12 hours before Margaret died.

Don and Margaret both grew up in Rowan County, North Carolina, and met while working at the Stanback Company, which makes headache powders and chapstick. 

Don joined the company after a stint in the Navy, while Margaret was hired as a secretary.  

'According to Daddy, he saw this pretty new little secretary, and he told the other guys, "I'm going to date her,"' Beaver said, according to the Salisbury Post.