A lifetime together, even in death

A woman who collapses during her husband's fatal heart attack dies hours later of a stroke, only 2 1/2 weeks before their 56th anniversary.

By JAMIE JONES

© St. Petersburg Times,
published September 30, 2001

BROOKSVILLE -- Helen Alsruhe's hair was brown and curly and perfectly fixed when she emerged from her home at Clover Leaf Farms each morning.

Her cheeks were dusted with rouge, her outfits stylish. Friends called her "the Barbie doll." She was always, they said, fit for company.

Helen was a woman of details, and the most important detail of her life was her husband, Henry, a retired printer known around the neighborhood for his skill on a piano and his singing voice.

Helen and Henry Alsruhe did everything together. They rode bikes and played golf and walked around Clover Leaf holding hands.

And so it came as a shock, but not necessarily a surprise, when friends heard what happened to the couple a week ago Friday.

After dark, in their living room, Henry collapsed. Helen called an ambulance and asked a friend next door to come quickly. When paramedics arrived, they asked Helen what kind of medicine Henry was taking.

"Where's his medicine, Helen?" her friend, Rose Sisto, asked as the paramedics pumped Henry's chest.

Helen seemed confused. Within moments, she slowly fell to the floor.

A lifetime of love

Friends would learn later that Helen, 71, had been writing regularly about her husband of 55 years on scraps of paper that she kept in kitchen drawers and boxes and the shed outside. She wrote about their marriage and about how Henry kissed her every night before bed.

One night, Helen wrote, she covered her face with Vaseline, and when Henry tried to kiss her, she demurred.

"I'm getting wrinkles," she said.

"Well, it's about time," he replied.

That made her feel good, Helen wrote.

They seemed the perfect foil, compatible opposites. Helen was outgoing and had many friends. The mother of five was always busy -- baking a poundcake, providing red satin hearts for a social function, learning to play golf because Henry liked the game. She was appeasing and effusive, her children say.

Friends call Henry an introvert. He rarely cut loose like his wife. Even while he was on stage performing in The Music Man or Oklahoma! before residents at Clover Leaf, he looked like he was concentrating, friends say. His enthusiasm came mostly in private moments, like when he pulled a friend into his home and demanded that she listen to the latest recording of The Phantom of the Opera.

Growing up, the Alsruhe children -- four girls and one boy -- remember their mother as the one who told them how much she loved them. They recall their father as the disciplinarian who rarely talked about how he felt.

The children say that as they became adults, they began to better understand their father, realizing that he showed his feelings through actions rather than words. They remember not having a tremendous amount of money -- the family of seven used one bathroom, the four girls slept in one bedroom, and they shared napkins at dinner.

But they all received a buffet of presents at Christmas, and the family took yearly vacations, stuffing themselves in a car and eating fried chicken and potato salad for lunch. Later, they realized how much overtime their father worked in his 34 years at the Baltimore Sun to provide those memories for them.

The children say their parents spent the best years of their lives in Florida, where they moved 13 years ago. They finally had time to relax, to plant flowers, to have social lives.

The Alsruhes told their children about their friends and activities. The children noticed that their father began telling them how much he loved them. Their parents were happy, the children say.

They went down together

It was about 8:30 on Friday evening, Sept. 21, when Henry, 76, collapsed in the living room. Helen's friend, Ms. Sisto, found her in the kitchen crying. Helen complained of pain in her arm. It felt like electricity was flowing through it, she told Ms. Sisto.

When the paramedics arrived and began working on Henry, they asked Ms. Sisto to help calm Helen. Ms. Sisto hugged her.

The paramedics asked about Henry's medicine. Ms. Sisto helped Helen toward the bedroom to look for it. Helen didn't seem to know where to look, Ms. Sisto recalled.

When they started walking back toward the kitchen, Helen collapsed. They went down together, Ms. Sisto said.

Helen said her head hurt. And she apologized.

"Oh, Rose," she said. "I'm sorry to cause you so much trouble."

The paramedics came to her side. "Does her mouth always look like that?" they asked Ms. Sisto. "No," she replied, realizing that it had begun to droop.

The paramedics called another ambulance and took Helen to the hospital. Ms. Sisto was surprised to realize Helen was having a stroke.

"She was in such great shape," Ms. Sisto said. "You should have seen her figure. It was amazing."

Henry died of a heart attack at Brooksville Regional Hospital at 9:50 p.m. Helen remained in her room with Ms. Sisto by her side.

"I told her we loved her," Ms. Sisto said. "They say if you talk to someone, they might respond and wake up. But Helen never did."

Helen was pronounced brain dead about 2:40 p.m. Saturday.

The children asked the hospital to leave Helen on life support until they arrived from their homes in Virginia, Miami and Maryland. They gathered at her bedside to say goodbye.

They said they were surprised when the hospital asked if they were willing to donate their parents' organs. Helen had always wanted to be a donor, the children said, but they thought she was too old.

The children agreed, and heard that Helen's liver had been given to a patient last weekend. Their father's eyes also were donated. Their parents would have liked that, the children believe.

They knew their father had health problems, but thought their mother would live for another 25 years.

"Our grandmother lived to be 95," said Helen's son, Tim Alsruhe. "We always thought she would, too."

Friends said it was appropriate that the couple died within hours of each other.

"She lived for him; he lived for her," said Helen Weiser, an 87-year-old friend of the Alsruhes who also lives in Clover Leaf. "They were very much in love. I don't think her body would sustain her without him."

The Alsruhe children gathered at the community center in Clover Leaf last week for a memorial service. Laughing and crying, they told stories about their parents as about 50 friends gathered.

After the service, the children said they felt comforted that their parents died together, but doubly robbed.

"She was my best friend," said Ashley McDonnell, 50.

"I keep wanting to turn to my parents and tell them how great their friends are," Tim Alsruhe said. "I keep realizing that they're not here."

Helen and Henry loved fall in the mountains and planned to make a trip to the Shenandoah Valley next year. The children plan to distribute their parents' ashes over the valley in Virginia as they requested.

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